Unsung innovators: The father of spam

It seemed like a good idea at the time, back before junk e-mail even had a nickname, no less a place in computer history. "I knew I was pushing the envelope," says Gary Thuerk, who on May 1, 1978, sent out the first unsolicited mass e-mailing in history. "I thought of it as e-marketing," he says about that first spam message, sent pre-Internet and two decades before most Americans were even getting their first e-mail address. "We wanted to reach as many as people as possible to let them know about our new product. It was coming out Dec. 20 of that year, and we didn't want to send invitations".

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