The first spam email was a product announcement

The story

On May 3, 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corporation, wanted to invite people on the West Coast to demonstrations of a new computer. Rather than write to each one, he had a single message sent to several hundred ARPANET addresses at once.

The reaction was swift. Recipients complained, and the administrators who ran the network told the company not to do it again. Thuerk later said the message also sold computers, which may explain why so many people since have tried the same thing.

The word “spam” came later, in the 1980s and 1990s. It is usually traced to a Monty Python sketch in which the word is repeated until it drowns out everything else.

Why it mattered

The first spam drew complaints right away, yet the reason it kept happening was plain: it worked. Unwanted bulk email later grew into a flood, and filtering it became a basic part of every email system. Today those same filters are a first line of defense against scams and malware.

The lesson today

Spam is now mostly filtered before anyone sees it. The bigger change is what hides in it. Unwanted email used to be annoying. Today, a small share of it is phishing designed to steal a password or redirect a payment, written well enough to look like a real message.

That is why email protection is part of security, and why it works best alongside people who know what to look for.