The
@ symbol is widely recognised as an integral part of email addresses,
but its history dates back far longer than the Internet age.
For the past half millennia or so, it was an accounting symbol used in merchant documents. The @ was shorthand for “arroba”, a unit of weight, and shipping documents used it to account for goods onboard.
The first document containing the @ symbol was a Spanish registry that used it to document a wheat shipment in the year 1448.
Even further back in history, there are theories that medieval monks used it as an abbreviation of the Latin article “ad”, which is used similarly to “toward”. The abbreviation was employed because it saves ink and time, as the theory goes.
For the past half millennia or so, it was an accounting symbol used in merchant documents. The @ was shorthand for “arroba”, a unit of weight, and shipping documents used it to account for goods onboard.
The first document containing the @ symbol was a Spanish registry that used it to document a wheat shipment in the year 1448.
Even further back in history, there are theories that medieval monks used it as an abbreviation of the Latin article “ad”, which is used similarly to “toward”. The abbreviation was employed because it saves ink and time, as the theory goes.
The @ symbol used in a mercantile document from 1448, to denote a wheat
shipment from Castile to the Kingdom of Aragon. Source:
Wikipedia[/caption]
But it wasn’t till 1971 that the @ entered mainstream use. Ray Tomlinson, a computer scientist at BBN Technologies (which developed an early version of the Internet called Arpanet), was looking at his computer keyboard and trying to figure out which symbol could be used to represent a user’s computer. The address format needed to have a user’s name at the start, with a symbol inbetween that and the host computer at the end.
Eventually, Tomlinson picked a symbol that was not commonly used, but was commonly placed on keyboards, and the @ symbol’s raison d'être was renewed.
And with social networks, the @ isn’t limited to email addresses. Adding an @ before user names is often used to tag other users on a site.
Did you find this post interesting? Tag your friends by posting it with their user names on MigMe!
By @vickiho
But it wasn’t till 1971 that the @ entered mainstream use. Ray Tomlinson, a computer scientist at BBN Technologies (which developed an early version of the Internet called Arpanet), was looking at his computer keyboard and trying to figure out which symbol could be used to represent a user’s computer. The address format needed to have a user’s name at the start, with a symbol inbetween that and the host computer at the end.
Eventually, Tomlinson picked a symbol that was not commonly used, but was commonly placed on keyboards, and the @ symbol’s raison d'être was renewed.
And with social networks, the @ isn’t limited to email addresses. Adding an @ before user names is often used to tag other users on a site.
Did you find this post interesting? Tag your friends by posting it with their user names on MigMe!
By @vickiho
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