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Readers who didn’t drag out the party hats and noisemakers this past Saturday missed a significant anniversary: On May 3, 1978, the very first spam message hit e-mailboxes. (For those who want to mark the occasion properly, the appropriate gift for 30^th anniversaries is pearls. Pearls before spam?)

The spammer-before-spam-was-spam was Gary Thuerk, a salesman for computer firm Digital Electronic Corp. (DEC). Thuerk recognized that the academics, engineers and scientists connected through an electronic network called the Arpanet (or, more formally, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – a forerunner of the Internet) were just the sort of folks who should respond well to an offer to attend “A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20”.

As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2003, Thuerk concluded “It’s too much work to send everyone an e-mail. So we’ll send one e-mail to everyone.” “Everyone” numbered between 393 and 600 recipients, depending on which published account one believes.

Brad Templeton, who writes about technology issues, chronicled some of the reactions to this first commercial e-mail message. (A history of that first spam message, along with its complete text, is available at http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html#reaction).

One user wrote, “I don't see any place for advertising on the Arpanet…certainly not the bulk advertising of that DEC message…Where is the line to be drawn between this sort of thing (if it is to be allowed at all) and advertising?”

Ah, sweet naiveté. More prescient was the Arpanet member who initially claimed not to be offended by the idea of the message, although admittedly he hadn’t received it himself.

“Would a dating service for people on the net be ‘frowned upon’ by DCA [the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) which hosted the Arpanet]?” this user wrote. He continued, “I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.”

“A dating service for people on the net”? Thirty years later, the Web has exceeded this user’s wildest dreams. As it happened, that Arpanet member later recanted, although he added the caveat “Nobody should be allowed to send a message with a header that long, no matter what it is about.” (Today’s marketers should empathize with this last point.)

I’ll spare readers the header’s actual verbiage, which goes into great detail about the model numbers of the systems being previewed. Suffice to say it was 90 words long. That’s words, people, not characters.

According to Templeton the technology writer, Thuerk maintains that a chance to view the new system was a news item of genuine interest to Arpanet users. Certainly as much so as the personal, albeit noncommercial, notes that had circulated around the system.

But, as Templeton notes, Thuerk “knew there would be some negative reaction. He primed his boss to be ready for complaints, though he didn't anticipate how strong they would be. The Defense Communications Agency (DCA) which ran the Arpanet, called Thuerk's boss, a former Air Force officer, to register a strong complaint.”

Thuerk, however, appears to have had the last laugh. According to the Los Angeles Times, this first spammer claimed that DEC sold more than 20 of the new systems, each with a price tag of around $1 million (and remember, that’s $1 million late-1970s/early-1980s dollars). Many of those leads, Thuerk claimed, were generated through open house demonstrations – which had been publicized through his unsolicited e-mail messages.

To respond to this column, please contact richard.levey@penton.com