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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class as a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that proves there's more than one way to

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Speaker 1: make history. I'm Gabe Lousier, and in this episode, we're

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Speaker 1: talking about the fateful day when spam email was unleashed

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Speaker 1: on unsuspecting inboxes all across the virtual world. The day

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Speaker 1: was May three, eight. Marketing manager Gary Thirk sent the

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Speaker 1: first unsolicited mass email, or as it's better known today, spam.

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Speaker 1: The message advertised the latest computers on offer from Thirk's employer,

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Speaker 1: the Digital Equipment Corporation or d e C. As a marketer,

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Speaker 1: Thirk wanted to get his product in front of his

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Speaker 1: many put entil buyers as possible, But in the late

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the average consumer wasn't in the market for

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Speaker 1: their own computing system. After all, the Internet didn't exist yet,

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Speaker 1: and it would be another two decades before most Americans

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Speaker 1: had their own email addresses. At the time, there were

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Speaker 1: only about twenty hundred people in the country who could

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Speaker 1: send and receive electronic mail. They did so through a

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Speaker 1: secure government funded network called ARPA Net, a research project

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Speaker 1: open primarily to Defense Department employees. And researchers. Thirk had

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Speaker 1: a hunch this group might be interested in his product,

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Speaker 1: so he sent an ad to three hundred and ninety

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Speaker 1: seven ARPA net addresses, along with an invitation to attend

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Speaker 1: a product demonstration. This early example of e marketing proved

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Speaker 1: to be a huge success. Thirk later claimed it brought

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Speaker 1: in about thirteen million dollars in sales. On the downside, though,

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Speaker 1: he was immediately hit with numerous complaints from our Ponette users,

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Speaker 1: including a researcher at the University of Utah who was

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Speaker 1: unable to use his computer because the spam emails had

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Speaker 1: taken up all his company's disk space. Thirk also received

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Speaker 1: a harsh scolding from the government and ar Bonnette representative

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Speaker 1: called him soon after the email blast, and, as Thirk

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Speaker 1: put it, quote, he chewed me out and made me

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Speaker 1: promise never to do it again. Gary Thirk may have

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Speaker 1: invented spam, but he definitely didn't call it that. In

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Speaker 1: back then, spam meant just one thing, spiced ham, and

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Speaker 1: more specifically the canned spiced ham produced by Hormel Foods.

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Speaker 1: The word wouldn't be applied to junk email until about

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Speaker 1: fifteen years later, when early Internet users started referring to

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Speaker 1: online ads as spam. Despite how that might sound, the

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Speaker 1: term actually wasn't a jab at Hormel's low cost pork product. Instead,

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Speaker 1: it was a reference to a sketch from a nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus egg sausage, egg

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Speaker 1: and spam and bacon and spam. In the famous sketch,

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Speaker 1: a customer at a restaurant hopelessly tries to order something

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Speaker 1: that doesn't contain spam, only to learn that it's a

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Speaker 1: key ingredient and just about every item on the menu.

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Speaker 1: As the server explains the relative spam content of the

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Speaker 1: various dishes, the other customers begin chanting spam in approval. Bacon,

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Speaker 1: spam and sausage. It's got spamming it as much as spag,

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Speaker 1: sausage and spam. I don't. Soon the repeated word drowns

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Speaker 1: out everything else, taking up all the space on the

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Speaker 1: menu and all the oxygen in the room. Spake as,

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Speaker 1: I love your spam. I love it. I'm in spam, spam, spam, sam, sam, spake, base, spom,

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Speaker 1: spasmo and stay. Make of this what you will. But

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Speaker 1: in the early days of the Internet, Monty Python fans

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Speaker 1: made up a sizeable portion of the user base, so

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Speaker 1: in unsolicited emails began piling up in their inboxes, pushing

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Speaker 1: things they didn't want to buy. The group knew just

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Speaker 1: the word to describe that intrusive visual noise. Soon after,

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Speaker 1: spam was widely adopted as a catch all term for

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Speaker 1: unwanted emails, a fact that thrills Hormel to no end.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure spam email is inescapable today, but that wasn't

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Speaker 1: always the case. When Gary Thurk sent his first unsolicited ad,

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Speaker 1: it annoyed so many people that no one sent another

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Speaker 1: one for about ten years. Eventually, though, as more and

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Speaker 1: more people went online, spam came back and with a vengeance.

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Speaker 1: Pitching a product, a service, or a cause was suddenly

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Speaker 1: easier than ever. You didn't need a targeted list of

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Speaker 1: potential customers. You could just send your message out on

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Speaker 1: mass and see if anyone bit. Most people wouldn't respond,

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Speaker 1: but the few who did were easy money. The practice

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Speaker 1: became even more streamlined with the introduction of botan nets

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Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, allowing the user to send

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Speaker 1: millions more junk emails every day. Of course, Gary Thirke

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Speaker 1: had no way of knowing that his simple marketing campaign

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Speaker 1: would grow into such a wide scale public nuisance. That

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Speaker 1: is what happened, though, and as a result, he's now

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Speaker 1: considered the father of spam email. It's a title he

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Speaker 1: grudgingly bears, even though he doesn't think he deserves it.

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Speaker 1: In thirk size, the email blast he sent was plain

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Speaker 1: old e marketing, not spamming. The difference, according to him,

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Speaker 1: is that the majority of people who receive spam don't

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Speaker 1: want it. The senders are working from an unqualified list

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Speaker 1: of recipients. In contrast, the email he sent advertising computers

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Speaker 1: was highly targeted. Everyone who got it had an established

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Speaker 1: interest in computers just by virtue of being online. In

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Speaker 1: Even if you aren't swayed by Gary's reasoning, it still

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Speaker 1: isn't fair to blame him for the trillions of spam

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Speaker 1: emails that are now sent every year. Sure, it's a

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Speaker 1: problem that sprang from his invention, but as he aptly

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Speaker 1: pointed out himself, quote, you don't blame the right brothers

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Speaker 1: for every flying problem. Once a marketer, always a marketer.

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Speaker 1: I'm gay Bluesier and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than he did yesterday. If you

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Speaker 1: want to keep up with the show, consider following us

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t d i HC Show.

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Speaker 1: You can also rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or you can write to us directly at this day

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Speaker 1: at I heart media dot com. Just please no spam.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thank

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Speaker 1: you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow

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Speaker 1: for another day in history class.