The story behind @

Day 127 / 365

The symbol ‘@’ has got to be one of the most popular symbols on the internet, second only to maybe the hashtag. The phrase “Don’t @ me”, is actually a meaningful sentence thanks to Twitter. While the internet is fairly new, the symbol ‘@’ has been around for centuries.

The initial usage of the symbol

The origins of the symbols are not clear. It has been linked to similar symbols in Frech, Latin, and even Buddhist scripts.

The first documented usages date back to the sixteenth century when it was used by merchants to write the rates of goods. So they would write “12 potatoes @ 1$” where the @ would stand for ‘at the rate of’.

This representation had stuck for centuries since then. This is why many people would still read emails as ‘ @ the rate gmail dot com’.

Transition to the digital age

@ remained a rarely used symbol in writing. Most of the early typewriters didn’t even include it. This, however, was a blessing in disguise for it.

The e-mail was invented by Ray Tomlinson, in 1971. To send a message electronically to another person on another computer, Ray needed an address to represent the user. This address had to have both the name of the person and the computer. So Ray needed a symbol he could use to separate the two names, and he needed something that was rarely used. He decided to go with ‘@’ and the rest is history!

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The Bystander Effect