How was the term spam invented?

Father of Spam Speaks Out on His Legacy Back in 1978, when the thing we now all think of as annoying, unsolicited, inbox-clogging email was just the canned, spongy sandwich meat, one man sent an email to 400 people, marketing his company's new product.

With that one fateful move, email spam was born.

Gary Thuerk, now in sales at computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co., sent out that original spam back when the Internet was called Arpanet, and researchers and the military were the only ones using it. As a marketing manager at the East Coast-based Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), Thuerk sent out the bulk email inviting West Coast techies to a demonstration of Dec's new Decsystem-20.