Gary Thuerk manually typed 393 addresses to send the first mass spam email

Evidence

“I looked at sending out invitations and calling all of those people,” Thuerk would recall, “but it was too hard to reach them by phone and too expensive and slow to print out invitations and send them.” So, fully aware that he was “pushing the envelope,” he decided to send out the world’s first mass, unsolicited email blast. Using a directory of West Coast Internet users, he and his project manager laboriously typed 393 separate email addresses into a giant header that went on for several pages. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 658

Categorization

• CANDY: The detail that he laboriously typed 393 addresses by hand for the world’s first spam is a great elevator-conversation fact.
• SHARE: Good to send to a friend who works in email marketing or spam filtering.