Spam Reaches 30-th Anniversary

The BBC reports that spam - the scourge of every e-mail inbox - celebrates its 30th anniversary this weekend. The first recognizable e-mail marketing message was sent on May 3, 1978 to 400 people on behalf of DEC - a now-defunct computer-maker. The message was sent via Arpanet - the internet's forerunner - and won its sender much criticism from recipients. The sender of the first junk e-mail message was Gary Thuerk and it was sent to advertise new additions to DEC's family of System-20 minicomputers. Despite Mr Thuerk's pioneering spam it took many years for unsolicited commercial e-mail to become a nuisance. It was 1993 before it won the name of spam - a name bestowed on it by Joel Furr - an administrator on the Usenet chat system. Mr Furr reputedly got his inspiration for the name from a Monty Python sketch set in a restaurant whose menu heavily featured the processed meat.