Spam (1987)

[Dave Wilton]

A couple of early Usenet sightings of "spam" to mean commercial content (the
OED has 1993):

Usenet, comp.sys.amiga, Binddrivers vs Mount, 30 Nov 1987: "Spam Content:
very little" The usenet posting contains no commercial content, but simply
asks some technical questions.

Usenet, comp.sys.amiga, A2000 serial port != A1000 (ackkkk!), 22 Oct 1987:
"This article contains a *little* bit of Spam. :-)" The usenet posting isn't
a straight commercial ad, but does plug Amiga at the expense of Commodore.

One of the replies to this last contains the exclamation, "Dirty Vikings!",
a reference to the Python skit.

--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net
  http://www.wilton.net