The History of Spam
Author: Jerry Benton

On December 15th, 1970 the final sketch of the 25th Monty Python show entitled Spam become one of the most memorable shows ever produced by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. During the sketch two customers are trying to order breakfast, but every dish contains the processed meat product Spam such as “spam egg spam bacon spam sausage and spam”. During a mild argument between the waitress and a customer that doesn’t want Spam, a group of Vikings break out into a chorus singing “Spam, lovely Spam, wonderful Spam” drowning out the rest of the characters. Eventually the sketch comes to an end with the climax consisting of the Vikings again singing their love for Spam. As the credits roll the viewer is again treated to more spam as every credit listed has “Spam” within each name along with other menu items.

One aspect that made this sketch so immensely popular was that it was originally inspired by rationing that took place during and after World War II in England. Since Spam was one of the few meats not rationed, the British quickly became tired of the product. Although the sketch was done in classic British humor, it was also a hit with American audiences and became the root of the modern term applied to unwanted junk e-mail. In the 1980s the term “spam” was used to describe abusive users that used tactics like repeating the phrase “SPAM” to scroll other users’ text off the screen and during the early days of America Online (AOL) some people even used quotes from the actual Monty Python script to flood chat rooms.

In what seemed a natural evolution, unwanted junk e-mail was also deemed as “spam” once the rate of these e-mails started to become a nuisance. Today, spam is an everyday part of anyone’s life that has a public e-mail account. In a recent study released by security firm Ironport, only about 20 percent of all e-mail is legitimate. Spam accounts for an estimated 67 percent, and the rest fall under several other categories like phising and viruses. Going back to the Monty Python sketch, the word “spam” was said a total of 132 times in a time frame of three minutes and thirty-four seconds. That is equivalent to saying “spam” once every two seconds, and that does not even come close to the amount of e-mail spam circling the Internet every second. In short, the amount of spam on the Internet has more than tripled the amount of legitimate e-mail and it is causing serious problems from both a technical and a non-technical point of view.

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