Posted in xn--kfs74mzzid01b.com edit by jack on January 7th, 2009
Who invented the "@" sign found on keyboards? How did it come to mean
"at"? How long
has it been around? What is the history of this character?Dear Marv,
The symbol @ (official term: asperand) - as you know it, as part of
email addresses - was introduced by Ray Tomlinson of Bolt Beranek and
Newman in 1971, as a separator symbol for one of the first e-mail
systems (SOURCE : Ray Tomlinson's Homepage, "Frequently Made
Mistakes", ).
However, the symbol existed before, and with the meaning of "at" in
Anglo-Saxon and Northern European cultures: "A commonly accepted
theory is that the symbol is derived from the Latin preposition "ad"
(which means "to" rather than "at"). The @ is supposed to be a
ligature developed by transcribing monks. However no document showing
this usage has been presented.
A more recent idea concerning the history of the @ symbol has been
proposed by Giorgio Stabile, a professor of history in Rome. He claims
to have traced the symbol back to the Italian Renaissance in a
Venetian mercantile document signed by Francesco Lapi on May 4, 1536.
The document talks about commerces with Pizarro and in particular the
price of an @ of wine in Peru. The symbol is still called arroba in
Spanish and Portuguese, and it represents a unit of weight with the
same name (1 arroba = 25 U. S. pounds), an old (Antonio Nebrjia,
Salamanca, 1492) Spanish/Latin dictionary translates arroba with
amphora. Under this view, the symbol was used to represent one
amphora, which was a unit of weight or volume based upon the capacity
of the standard terracotta jar. The symbol came into use with the
modern meaning "at the price of" in northern Europe."
(SOURCE: Wikipedia, @, ).
You can read more about the history of @, @:
"WHERE IT’S AT Names for a common symbol" , World Wide Words,
Ray Tomlinson's Homepage
The Guardian: Does the symbol @ have a name? If not, any suggestions?
I hope this answers your question. Please contact me if you need any
further clarifications on this answer before you rate it. Search
terms: "the at sign", asperand#If you have any other info about this subject , Please add it free.# |
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