May 3, 2008: Spamfather

And now for something completely different.....

Here you see an image of the Spamfather.


The very first spam email, sent 30 years ago to 393 users on Arpanet, predecessor of today's Internet. It's all downhill from there.

Nice!

I was recently reading about the point in time when they had to add a dot domain to the end of the system's name. There were just too many systems on the net for each to have a unique name. They really didn't foresee how convoluted the naming system would get!

...and the world's second spam email?

"You can improve both your manhood AND your credit rating at the same time, with no money down!"

lol! Let's get a good look at the pioneerz!

Attachment 17816

That's wonderful. I love how polite it is compared to modern spam. It's so low key!

And you'll take note that all this crap started in California... just saying, ya know.

The demo is in CA, but the mail was from DEC-MARLBORO... i.e. Marlboro, MA, where DEC was headquartered back when they existed. Maybe we should blame the damned New Englanders instead.

I'm old enough to remember those days. Notice that it was an invitation to a presentation and not an offer of sale. In those days it wasn't acceptable to do business on the internet. Sigh.

I'll bet when people showed up at the presentation, they found out it was actually a sales pitch for herbal penis enlargement.

I wonder when did the term SPAM was first applied to these sorts of solicitations. And did the 'specially prepared meat' suggest the penis enlarger pills & ads that plague us, or is that just coincidence?

Not a Monty Python fan, eh?

Of course I am! And if if I wasn't I would not dare admit it. But did it come from that skit?

That's the story that's been going around.

More at Wikipedia

It's not a realistic depiction of spam mail from 1978. It uses a proportional font, with italics. WYSIWYG wasn't invented then.

If you want the REAL spam experience from 1978, the spam would have to be:
* Monospaced
* 80 columns wide
* Rendered in green text on a black background

At least it has the all-uppercase bit right, though.