We use this sign almost every day when we write an e-mail or give our e-mail address to someone. But do you know the real meaning of the @ sign and where it comes from? The first documented use of this sign dates back about 500 years. But back then, it served a very different purpose from its meaning and usage today. It is possible to see the traces of this sign when we go further back.
The @ (Meat sign), which Italians call “snail” and Dutch call “monkey tail”, has become an indispensable part of electronic communication thanks to e-mail addresses and Twitter accounts. The @ sign is a sign that has even made its way into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
One of the most elegant characters on the keyboard, the origin of the symbol is actually a bit of a mystery. One theory says that the source was 5th century monks looking for shortcuts when copying manuscripts. According to this theory, the sign was used in place of the Latin word “name” meaning “right”.
The first documented use appears in a 1536 letter by Francesco Lapi, a Florentine merchant, using @ to denote units of wine called amphorae shipped in large clay jars. The symbol then begins to take on a historical role in commerce. Traders have long used it to mean “in proportion”—as in “12 pieces @ $1 dollar”…
Use of the @ Sign in Technology
The sign appears on machines much later. The first typewriters built in the mid-1800s did not include @. Similarly, @ was not among the symbolic sequence of the earliest punch card tabulation systems (first used in the collection and processing of the 1890 U.S. census), which were precursors to computer programming.
The modern obscurity of the symbol came to an end in 1971 when a computer scientist named Ray Tomlinson was faced with a vexing problem: the problem of how to connect people programming computers. was connected to the machine via a telephone connection and a teletype machine (basically a keyboard with a built-in printer). But these computers were not interconnected; This was a shortcoming that the US government sought to overcome when it hired BBN Technologies, the Cambridge, Massachusetts company where Tomlinson worked, to help develop a network called Arpanet, the precursor to the internet.
- @ How to Make (Meat) Sign on the Keyboard?
Tomlinson’s challenge was how to deal with a message created by one person and sent via Arpanet to someone on a different computer. He thought that the address needed the name of one person and the name of the computer that could serve many users. And the symbol separating these two address elements was not widely used in programs and operating systems so that computers would not be confused.
Tomlinson’s eyes, “P”? on Model 33? slid onto @ standing on it. “I was mostly looking for a symbol that wasn’t used much,” he told the Smithsonian. There weren’t as many options as exclamation points or commas.
“I could have used an equal sign, but that wouldn’t make much sense,” says Tomlison in a statement. And finally he chose @. Using his own naming system, he sent an e-mail from one system in his room to another system in his room that went over Arpanet. This is the first time the @ sign is used in this email.
Tomlinson, who currently works at BBN, says he doesn’t remember what he wrote in that first email. But here’s the thing: With this message, the once almost outdated @ sign has become the symbolic cornerstone of a revolution in how people connect.
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