It is hard to believe that 45 years ago, the first spam email was sent! Granted, back then, it was still called electronic mail and instead of sending it to thousands or millions of people on the internet, it was sent to a few hundred users on ARPANET.
Gary Thuerk, a marketer for the Digital Equipment Corporation, blasted out his message to about 400 of the 2600 people on the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Of course, Gary was selling something. While he did annoy a lot of people, he apparently also had some success, with a few recipients interested in what he was pushing. And thus, spam was born.
If you're interested in learning more, here's a video from HistoryPod that goes a bit more into it:
Ahhh, spam. It's not just what's for dinner.
