If you are online, you use this little squiggly symbol all the
time. So what do you call this graceful character so common today in modern
electronic communication?
The “at” sign?
That funny swirling sign?
The Italians call it the snake.
The Dutch name it the monkey tail.
The Korean call it the snail.
The Norwegian nickname it the pig’s tail.
Surprisingly though, there is no official, universal name
for this sign, though some grammar or trivia experts identify it as the
ampersat.
We really don’t know much about @ origin. Some think medieval
monks looking for a shortcut took the Latin word for “toward,” which is ad. They then took the “a” portion and
added a looping tail from the “d.”
Others think this symbol comes from the abbreviation for
“each at,” taking the letter “a” and encircling it with the “e.”
The first documented use of this fancy symbol occurred in
1536, in a letter by Francesco Lapi, a Florentine merchant, who used @ to
denote units of wine called amphorae, which were shipped in large clay jars.
Another story tells the @ symbol was used as an abbreviation
for the word amphora. Amphora was the unit of measurement that determined the
amount held by the large terra cotta jars that were used to ship grain, spices
and wine.
Merchants have long used it to signify “at the rate of”—as
in “12 widgets @ $1.”
The first typewriters, built in the mid-1800s, didn’t
include @. Likewise, @ was not among the symbolic array of the earliest
punch-card tabulating systems (first used in collecting and processing the 1890
U.S. census), which were precursors to computer programming.
The @ symbol found new relevance in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson,
a computer scientist, pondered how to connect with other people in the computer
industry. At that time many computers didn’t talk to each other since the
Internet had yet to be invented.
Tomlinson knew he needed to address a message using the
other person’s name and the name of the computer. He searched for symbol not in
wide use to separate the two. He discovered or should we say rediscovered the
@. He used the @ to send the first
email to another computer and then back to himself - the birth of a new form of communication all due to a
fancy “a” with curl around it.
Maybe that is a lesson for all of us. Sometimes we feel like
we are misunderstood or no longer valued or of use to anyone. I have hopes
though, that the Greatest Scientist of All, the One who created this universe
knows how best to use each of us.
We may just be the one He is looking for to connect two unrelated
thoughts that end up sending the Good News around the world in a new way.
Lord, use me like the
@ symbol.
Posts
