On 3 May 1978, a marketing manager named Gary Thuerk sent what is widely recognized as the first unsolicited bulk email and as a result his message has been flagged as the birth of “spam”.
THE DETAILS OF THE FIRST SPAM
The Sender: Gary Thuerk was a marketer for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). He worked with an engineer, Carl Gartley, who actually sent the message through Thuerk’s account using a program called SENDMSG.
The Message: It was an advertisement for a product presentation of DEC’s newest computers, specifically the DECSYSTEM-20 family.
The Recipients: The email was sent to approximately 393 to 400 users on ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet.
The Reaction: The response from ARPANET users was almost universally negative, with many considering it a violation of network etiquette. The U.S. Defense Communication Agency even filed a complaint against DEC for the intrusion.
THE OUTCOME
Despite the backlash, the experiment was a financial success for DEC. Thuerk estimated that the message directly resulted in approximately $12 million to $13 million in sales.
While the event occurred in 1978, the term “spam” wasn’t applied to junk email until the early 1990s, famously inspired by the Monty Python “Spam” sketch where the word is repeated until it drowns out all other conversation.
The DECSYSTEM-20
The DECSYSTEM-20 (often called the DEC-20) is effectively “dead” as a commercial product, but it survives in a “zombie” state through enthusiast communities and emulators. While Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was eventually bought out, the DECSYSTEM-20 line was discontinued long before that corporate acquisition.
IS IT STILL ALIVE?
Technically, no new hardware has been produced in decades, but it remains “alive” in two specific ways:
Emulation: You can still run the TOPS-20 operating system on modern PCs using emulators like SIMH or specialized distributions like Mark Crispin’s Panda TOPS-20.
Hobbyist Networks: Systems like the SDF Public Access Unix System and HECnet (a global enthusiast network using DEC protocols) sometimes host “live” TOPS-20 instances that users can log into via Telnet.
Museums: Physical units exist in collections like the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, though some notable collections have been auctioned off following the deaths of their founders (e.g., the Paul Allen collection auction in 2024).
WHEN DID IT DISAPPEAR?
The disappearance was a gradual process that began in the early 1980s:
The “Jupiter” Cancellation (1983): In a move that shocked the industry, DEC officially cancelled the “Jupiter” project—the planned high-end successor to the 36-bit line—in 1983. This signaled the end of the line for the DECSYSTEM-20.
Manufacturing Ceased (1988): While DEC continued to support existing customers for several years, all manufacturing of the 36-bit machines finally ended in 1988.
The Migration: Customers were largely pushed toward DEC’s VAX (Virtual Address eXtension) systems, which became the company’s primary focus throughout the late 80s.
WAS IT BOUGHT OUT?
The product line itself was never bought out by another company to be continued as a mainstream product, but the company (DEC) went through a series of high-profile acquisitions:
Compaq Acquisition (1998): DEC was acquired by Compaq in June 1998 for $9.6 billion, which was the largest merger in computer history at the time.
HP Merger (2002): Compaq subsequently merged with Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2002, making HP the ultimate successor to DEC’s remaining intellectual property and service contracts.
XKL Systems: One notable exception is XKL, a company founded by Cisco co-founder Len Bosack, which produced the TOAD-1 and TOAD-2 systems in the 1990s—modernized, hardware-compatible versions of the PDP-10/DEC-20 architecture.
Gary Theurk
As of May 2026, Gary Thuerk is still alive and remains a notable figure in tech history, often appearing at industry events as the “Father of Spam”. Having sent the first mass unsolicited commercial email on May 3, 1978, he has spent the last few decades balancing his legacy as a marketing pioneer with the notoriety of having “broken” the inbox.
CURRENT ACTIVITIES & RECENT COMMENTS
While he has largely retired from his career at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Thuerk has remained active in the technology and non-profit sectors:
Consulting & Mentorship: He has spent recent years consulting for non-profit organizations and staying involved in education as a judge for high school robot competitions.
The “Father of e-Marketing” Perspective: He frequently comments that he prefers the title “Father of e-Marketing” over “Father of Spam”. In recent retrospectives, he has noted that modern marketers continue to make the same mistakes from 40 years ago, purely because the “cost of entry” for email remains effectively zero.
Zero Regrets: Thuerk remains proud of his 1978 experiment, often comparing himself to the Wright Brothers. He maintains that while the reaction was immediately negative, the email directly resulted in $12 million to $13 million in sales for DEC’s new computer systems.
Recent Reflections: For the 48th anniversary of his email (May 3, 2026), he was featured in several “This Day in Tech History” retrospectives, where he was quoted as being amused that his single email to ~400 people evolved into a global phenomenon of hundreds of billions of messages per day.
BIOGRAPHIES AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Gary Thuerk is generally accessible through professional networks and historical archives:
LinkedIn: He embraces his history on the platform, famously using the handle “fatherespam” for his professional profile.
Guinness World Records: He holds the official world record for the “Oldest electronic spam”.
If you ever meet him at a convention, he is known for being a good sport about his “creation,” though he might still get a bit of “hate mail” from purists who miss the days of the spam-free ARPANET.