Two cans of Spam meat product
29 November 2021
The brand name Spam, used for canned meat product made by the Hormel Corporation, is probably a blend of spiced + ham. It went on the market in 1937, as can be seen in this notice published by the US Patent Office:
Ser. No. 394,133. GEO. A. HORMEL & COMPANY, Austin, Minn. Filed June 16, 1937
SPAM
For Canned Meats—Namely, Spiced Ham.
Claims use since May 11, 1937.
And in this advertisement in the Minneapolis Tribune of 25 June 1937:
SPAM
Hormel Spiced Luncheon Meat.
Cooked Ready to Serve, 12 oz. tin.
EA. 29c
And Hormel’s annual report for 1937 concludes with the following plug for its newest product:
An interesting new product of Geo. A. Hormel & Co. is SPAM. Stockholders are urged to ask for SPAM. They are urged to have a breakfast of SPAM and eggs, or a SPAMWICH at noon lunch, or Baked SPAM for supper. One of a long line of Hormel innovations. It is copyrighted. Only Hormel can produce SPAM. It is packed in 12 oz. cans.
The explanation of spiced + ham is a bit contentious though. While the evidence from the quotations given above point to it being correct, some contend that since the primary ingredient isn’t ham, but rather pork shoulder, that blend isn’t the real origin. But then, such distinctions have never gotten in the way of marketing, so the spiced + ham origin remains the most likely explanation. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink In America cites “company sources” as giving an alternative, acronymic explanation of Shoulder of Pork And Ham, but this sounds like a post-hoc rationalization of the term.
But spam is more than just a meat product. It’s slang for mass posting or sending of internet messages and email, especially commercial advertisements, without regard to their appropriateness for the specific forum or venue. This sense of spam was created in homage to a Monty Python sketch about a café that serves nothing but Spam and patronized by a group of Vikings who interrupt conversations with paeans to Spam that largely consist of the product’s name repeated again and again. The sketch first aired on the BBC on 15 December 1970:
Cut to a café. All the customers are Vikings. Mr and Mrs Bun enter—downwards (on wires).
Mr Bun (ERIC) Morning.
Waitress (TERRY J) Morning.
Mr Bun What have you got then?
Waitress Well there’s egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam; or lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pâté, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam.
Mrs Bun (GRAHAM) Have you got anything without spam in it?
Waitress Well, there’s spam, egg, sausage, and spam. That’s not got much spam in it.
Mrs Bun I don’t want any spam.
Mr Bun Why can’t she have egg, bacon, spam and sausage?
Mrs Bun That’s got spam in it!
Mr Bun Not as much as spam, egg, sausage and spam.
Mrs Bun Look, could I have egg, bacon, spam and sausage without the spam.
Waitress Uuuuuuggggh!
Mrs Bun What do you mean uuugggh! I don’t like spam.
Vikings (singing) Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam...spam, spam, spam, spam...lovely spam, wonderful spam...
But like many slang terms, spam did not have a fixed definition at first. It went through several similar senses before settling on the one that is familiar today. The first known computing use of the term is as a verb. From Eric Raymond’s Jargon File of 16 August 1991:
spam: [from the {MUD} community] vt. To crash a program by overrunning a fixed-size buffer with excessively large input data.
And there is this definition that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 30 September 1993:
Spam: Information that might not be legitimate or real, as in "This rumor may have a high Spam content."
And this from Newsday on 7 November 1993:
Spam: Pointless description, excess verbiage. "I got sick of hanging out in the Living Room, Land O' The Spam."
But the event that elevated the sense of unsolicited messages to the fore came in April 1994, when two Arizona lawyers sent an advertisement to thousands of Usenet newsgroups and subsequently attempted to establish an internet advertising agency. From the New York Times of 7 May 1994:
Mr. Canter and Ms. Siegel have been the focus of intense criticism on several computer networks since April 12, when they posted an advertisement offering their legal services on thousands of Usenet bulletin boards, called news groups, without regard for the interests of the specific news groups.
[...]
The act, while not illegal, violated long-held traditions against random placement of any type of messages on news groups. Such scatter-shot messaging is known as “spamming.”
Some say the internet went downhill from that point on.
Sources:
Chapman, Graham, et al. “Spam.” Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Second Series, Episode 12, recorded 25 June 1970, aired 15 December 1970. Monty Python’s Flying Circus: All the Words, vol. 2 of 2. New York: Pantheon, 1989, 27.
Doll, Pancho. “A Quiet Revolution: Computer Bulletin Boards Have Captivated the Attention of County Users.” Los Angeles Times, Ventura West edition, 30 September 1993, 6. ProQuest.
Financial Report of Geo. A. Hormel & Company. 16 November 1937, 12. ProQuest Annual Reports.
Lewis, Peter H. “Arizona Lawyers Form Company for Internet Advertising.” New York Times, 7 May 1994, 51. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2001, modified June 2020, s.v. spam, v.; second edition, 1989 with draft edition of June 2001, s.v. Spam, n.
“Piggly Wiggly” (Advertisement). Minneapolis Tribune, 25 June 1937, 9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
Quittner, Joshua. “Far Out Welcome to Their World Built of MUD.” Newsday, Nassau and Suffolk edition, 7 November 1993, 3. ProQuest.
Raymond, Eric. Jargon File, version 2.9.6, 16 August 1991.
“Spam.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, second edition. Andrew F. Smith, ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. Oxfordreference.com.
“Trade-Marks.” Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, 483.4, 26 October 1937, 750. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Zimmer, Ben. “How a Mystery Meat Became an Inbox Invader.” Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2019, C3. ProQuest Recent Newspapers.
Photo credit: David Wilton, 2021. Licensable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.