Key Takeaways
In Germany , the @ symbolis call off aKlammeraffe(“spider imp " ) . In Israel , it ’s call astrudelafter theroll - form pastry . In Hungary , Norway and Turkey , it ’s called thekukac(“worm”),grisehale(“pig ’s stern " ) andgül(“rose " ) , severally .
In English , we ’ve ignored the sport , curlicue pattern of @ and gone with the emphatically less coloured " at mark . " But if you ’re really interested in the long and fascinating history of the now - ubiquitous @ , it ’s good to call it by its Spanish name , arroba .
A Weighty Symbol
If you travel to a Spanish - speaking country today and visit the local food market , you might hail across a different substance ofarrobathat predates email computer address and Twitter handles by half a millenary .
In Ecuador or Bolivia , for exemplar , a large quantity of white potato vine is often sold by thearrobawith onearrobaequalinga little less than a bushel ( 60 poundsor 27.2 kilograms ) . Anarrobaof oil , meanwhile , measures more than 3 gal ( 11.3 liters ) , while anarrobaof vino is over 4 gallons ( 15.1 cubic decimetre ) .
But what ’s the connection betweenarrobathe weight / metre andarrobathe @ on your keyboard ?
For the solution , we turned to Keith Houston , author of " Shady fictitious character : The Secret Life of Punctuation , Symbols and Other Typographical Marks " and his exhaustive , two - part history of the @ symbolization .
Greeks, Romans and Moors - Oh My!
As Houston explains , the Greeks and Romans used to trade commodities like wine-colored , oil color and olives stored in long - necked ceramic jar calledamphorae . For these ancient Mediterranean merchants , anamphorawas not only a convenient computer memory watercraft , but a standard measurement — oneamphoraequaled a mass of one cubic pes or roughly 7 Imperial gallon ( 26.5 cubic decimeter ) .
Meanwhile , Spanish and Lusitanian traders used a alike method to set a stock weight unit and volume for casks of different trade good . They did n’t habituate the wordamphora , but ratherarroba , which they adopt from the Arabic - speak Moors who ruled the Iberian peninsulafrom 711 to 1492 C.E.The Arabical rubmeans " one - one-fourth , " and anarrobain ancient Spain and Portugal was a " tail of a quintal , " pen Houston , which was around 4 gallon ( 15.1 liters ) or 25 pounds ( 11.3 kilograms ) .
The World’s First @ Sign?
There ’s a rationality Houston spends so much meter talking about ancient clayware and Medieval weight and criterion . That ’s how an Italian historian discovered what may be the first identifiable exercise of the @ symbolization in memorialise history .
In the class 2000 , Giorgio Stabile , a professor of the chronicle of scientific discipline at La Sapienza University in Rome , trip on a letter dating from 1536 that appear to use the @ sign as stenography foramphorae . The source , an Italian dealer make Francesco Lapi , spell that in Seville , Spain " anamphoraof wine , which is one - thirtieth of a barrel , is deserving 70 or 80 ducats . "
But or else of writing out the word " amphora , " Lapi used the @ symbolisation .
" Until now no one knew that the @ sign derive from this symbol , which was develop by Italian traders in a mercantile script they created between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance , " Stabiletold The Guardianin 2000 . " The closed circuit around the ' a ' is typical of that merchandiser script . "
When Stabile wait at Spanish - Latin dictionaries from the 16th century , he found thatarrobawas synonymous withamphora . So , it ’s very potential that Spanish dealer would have adopted the same @ symbol to suffer forarroba , have the Spanish name for the @ sign one of the oldest and true we have .
How @ Got On Your Keyboard
In more mod utilisation , Houston says that the @ symbol became stenography for " at the pace of . " A manufacturing plant ordering supplies might invoice for " 100 tons of steel telegram @ $ 50 / ton , " for example , or a neighbourhood grocer would advertise a daily special for " bratwurst @ $ .30 / pound . "
Even though @ was widely used in business and commerce by the nineteenth 100 , the symbol was n’t included in the earliest mechanically skillful typewriter . Houston points out that the very first typewriter made by American artificer Christopher Latham Sholes in 1868 only had enough key for the numbers two through nine . The capital letter " O " and " I " substitute for zero and one .
Just like the $ sign , the business - friendly @ made its way onto typewriter keyboard by the end of the 19th hundred . But it would take another 50 year for the @ symbolisation to be ask over to the nascent computing party .
Houston spell that in the 1950s , the @ mark was added to something called the Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code ( BCDIC ) , a collection of 48 characters print on early computing poke cards . And in 1961 , IBM cemented the @ symbol ’s place in figure by including the fibre in the programming codification for its room - sized"Stretch " supercomputer , the profligate computer of its daylight .
Ray Tomlinson and the First Email Address
There ’s a skillful chance the @ sign would still be an obscure keyboard theatrical role if not for the actions of a humble engineer named Ray Tomlinson back in 1971 .
Tomlinson was working for a private defense contractile organ avail the U.S. regime ’s Advanced Research Projects Agency build what would become the globe ’s first net , live as ARPANET . Tomlinson ’s task was to write programs that would run on this young net connecting a banging 19 ( ! ) different machines in 1971 .
Electronic mail already exist in a rude form at the time . Messages could be saved by a user and open up later on by a different user on the same machine . But Tomlinson , as a side project , wanted to see if subject matter could be sent from one machine to another over ARPANET .
There was a job , though . How would Tomlinson verbatim messages to different users on the same remote computer ? He call for a symbol that would serve as the address . reckon down at his teletype terminal , Tomlinson saw the lowly @ symbol sitting atop the letter " P. "
allot to Houston , Tomlinson opt the @ symbol for a number of hardheaded understanding . First , it was already common tachygraphy for " at the charge per unit of " so it made sense as " user ' at ' host computer . " Second , it was obscure enough that it would n’t have been used in any be server information processing system names . And third , because the @ was n’t already a command on his company ’s scheduling organization .
Tomlinson compose up the observational email programme and institutionalize a tryout message to himself from his brand - new email destination : tomlinson@bbn - tenexa . What did the reality ’s first email say ? Tomlinson has zero recollection , but guesses it was something suitably momentous like " test 1 2 3 4 " or " QWERTYUIOP . "
HowStuffWorks realise a small affiliate charge when you purchase through links on our site .
