Oh, You Think @ Is Just For E-Mail? Honey, This Symbol Has Been Living Its Best Life Since Before Columbus Set Sail!
E-Mail! It’s pretty much something that all of us use, some even on a daily basis, and along with that goes your email address. But you may be surprised to hear the origin of the most common element of the e-mail address, and that’s the @ symbol.
Most people I know tend to think our squiggly little friend didn’t exist before the Internet, or at the very least saw it there, but never used or knew what it was for. Let’s go back a little bit to the year 1536!
Back then, someone by the name of Francesco Lapo, a Florentine merchant, was using the @ symbol in his business letters. We know this because we still have some of them today!
But Why, do you ask, that he was using the @ symbol? It’s not like a computer wouldn’t be invented for more than 400 years or so… Well, it turns out that the @ symbol at that time meant “at the rate of”, or simply put, it our equivalent of “Price per-unit” or price per item. That’s right, the @ sign was basically part of a simple multiplication equation, or the equivalent of a Renaissance era “Excel” equation!
You may be thinking “Wow, that’s a long time ago”, but guess what? It doesn’t end there! There’s actually a document from 1345 where we see the @ symbol used in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek Chronicle… and nobody appears to know why!
To say it’s a little bit out of place is an understatement! It’s no different than seeing a modern smart phone in one of the first photographs taken in the late 1800’s!
And if you think that’s strange enough, just wait, there’s more!
The @ sign has also been know to be shorthand for “Arroba”, a 25 lb weight of measurement! Yes, our mysterious little friend has had a checkered and varied past for sure!
But let’s get back to modern times and talk about the @ sign’s use in Email communication. Interestingly, the @ sign actually pre-dates the Internet! That’s right, the @ sign has been around longer than the World Wide Web and more!
In 1971, the first protocols were established creating the Simple Mail Transport Protocol, or SMTP. That’s a fancy way of saying e-mail for the rest of you!
That’s right, e-mail was a thing before the Internet even existed. But if the Internet didn’t exist, why was email created I hear you ask? Well, that’s a great question!
The predecessor to the Internet, like most modern inventions and technology, finds it’s origins in a project from the US Department of Defense call the ARPANET, or Advanced Research Project Agency NETwork. You see, the US military wanted a way to communicate in the event of a major natural disaster or war, and as such, the ARPANET was born!
The actual Internet, well, what it started out as, didn’t show up until 1983, and the rest we can say “is history”. So the next time your sitting there, calmly addressing a message to a friend, family member, or someone else, just remember that the @ sign has been around far longer than you think!
