One of Apple’s founding directors quits and the first SPAM is posted to message boards. All on today’s On This Day from TEST Huddle.
1976 – Ronald Wayne Quits Apple
Just eleven days after Apple was established as a company, Ronald Wayne, one of the three co-founders of Apple Computer, leaves the company. He sells his 10% share in the company for $800. His reason for leaving the company was that the partnership agreement for the company directors meant that each director was personal liable for debts the company incurred irregardless of which partner incurred the debt. While at Apple Wayne created the first Apple logo, wrote the manual for Apple 1 and wrote the company’s partnership agreement. Wayne was later quoted as saying he “either was going bankrupt or the richest man in the cemetery.” By 1982, a ten percent share of Apple Computer will be worth US$1.5 billion.
1994 – The First SPAM
On this day in 1994, the first commercial spam is posted to at least six thousand Usenet message boards using a simple Perl script written by a programmer only known as “Jason,”. The SPAM occurs shortly after the National Science Foundation lifted its unofficial ban on commercial speech on the Internet. The spam is posted on behalf of Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, two lawyers married and practising law together in Phoenix, Arizona under the practice name Canter & Siegel. The SPAM script floods message boards with an advertisement of their services available for an upcoming “Green Card Lottery.” The law firm’s ISP will receive such a large number of complaints over the next two days that it terminates the firm’s service. By December 1994, the two lawyers will claim to have successfully solicited one thousand new clients through the ads and “made $100,000 off an ad that cost them only pennies.”
Images: Wikipedia
