On May 3, 1978, The first documented spam message was sent out to 393 recipients on ARPANET. The message was sent by Gary Thuerk and advertised the availability of a new model of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computer. Several thousand people were on the ARPAnet then, most of them computer scientists.

Thuerk wanted to send all 600 ARPAnet members on the West Coast of the US an e-mail invitation. He decided it was too much work to send everyone a single e-mail, which was the standard practice at the time, so he decided to send one e-mail to everyone. The reaction from the net community was fiercely negative and earned DEC a stern reprimand from Major Raymond Czahor – chief administrator of Arpanet, but Thuerk’s spam did generate some sales.

Thuerk’s innovation earned him the dubious honor of being added to the Guinness World Records when the term “spam” didn’t exist yet.

Following the first spam message a long chain of discussion between APRAnet users who were concerned about censorship on Apranet occured which can be viewed here.

On spams 32nd birthday despite many ideas, we still have not managed to resolve the spam problem, willl domain based reputation be the answer?

Sources:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Thuerk

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/18084/spam-turning-30-this-month-no-gifts-please/