SPAM AVANT LA LETTRE Today I was phoned by my elder brother, who had decided to dispose of my father's old typewriter. Was I perhaps interested to have it? Sorry, not really, but suddenly I realized that my father had been one of the first spammers. More than fifty years ago, my dad bought a typewriter, or to use his particular way of calling it, a "tijp-machine".   He used this machine to type a letter in which the question was broached what would happen to the addressee in case of unexpected misfortune. Suppose the addressee's motorcar was smashed up? Or he or his family were struck by some gruesome affliction? For adversity like this my father's letter offered the solution: an insurance, to be taken out through his mediation, of course. He had a few thousand copies of this letter printed. How did my father get the addresses? He cycled to a street in Amsterdam, each time a different one. If it happened to be a neighbourhood whose inhabitants he did not completely trust, I "was allowed" to accompany him and was assigned the task to watch his bicycle. Then he stopped before every door and wrote down the names he read on the name plates.        After an hour or so, when my father had harvested some hundred names and addresses, he went home and used his typewriter to copy the names on envelopes. Then the letters were signed, folded and put in the envelopes, after which he returned to the aforementioned street, this time to put the envelopes with the letters into the letterboxes. After a few days he visited all the addresses for the third time, now to ring the door bells and to inquire whether they had read his letter: "would they perhaps be interested in taking out an insurance?" Spam avant la lettre, I agree. But less annoying than today's spam. After all, those who told my father they were not interested never saw him again. Unfortunately this cannot be said of today's spammers ... This weblog appeared in Dutch on 20 June 2005 on Internet site Overtom.nl.
	Next weblog  Previous weblog  Weblog menu