Answer: Computer Sales

These days we are used to being inundated with Spam messages–unsolicited advertisements that pile up behind our email spam filters every day. In the early days of computing, however, it was considered poor form to waste precious resources with such commercial pandering. All that changed in 1978 when a young Gary Turk fired off an unsolicited email to 400 people on ARPANET (the precursor to the Internet) pitching his new line of personal computers.

The email proved so unpopular and the backlash against sending an unsolicited commercial email was so great, it was over a decade before anyone else tried their luck with shotgunning commercial emails out over the network.