Spam turns 29 today
May 1st, 2007 by Randy Stewart, Product Manager
Wired News reports today on the 29th anniversary of the “first piece of unsolicited bulk e-mail” sent out over the internet. Sent from DEC employee, Gary Thuerk to 400 people on Arpanet (the precursor network to the internet), this email started the menace that we all deal with today.
Apparently, Mr. Thuerk “thought Arpanet users would find it cool that DEC had integrated Arpanet protocol support directly into the new DEC-20 and TOPS-20 OS,” according to EFF Chairman Brad Templeton, who has an archive of the entire message.
The content of that message starts:
“DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE DECSYSTEM-10
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE. BOTH THE DECSYSTEM-2060T AND 2020T OFFER FULL ARPANET SUPPORT UNDER THE TOPS-20 OPERATING SYSTEM.”
Looks like spam was hard to read from the beginning.
As you can imagine, people weren’t too happy to have their inbox invaded by unwanted and unrequested email. Brad Templeton’s page has the full message as well as reactions to that initial spam.
Read [via Wired News]