Do numbers in different languages symbols
These one's are truly rare, but just in case you'll need some, here they are: Next is Ukrainian alphabet and some other symbols from Russian and ancient languages. Tom Chatfield’s book Netymology has more etymological explorations - or you can read his articles on Medium of the Apple command symbol, “ wiki ”, and onscreen language itself. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared on Medium. For me, though, it adds a pleasant depth to the hastily tapped symbol on my keyboard: a little piece of the ancient Mediterranean lodged in modernity, and a supreme enabler of contemporary exchange. There’s a clear link, here, between the modern Spanish and Portuguese word for both the sign and a unit of weight – arroba – and the container on which this unit of weight was based, the amphora, used by both the ancient Greeks and Romans to transport liquids (and wine in particular).Īll of which brings us a long way from email, and indeed from pickled rolls and snails. As Houston notes, an instance of meaning “at the rate of” is recorded as early as a letter sent in May 1536 by a Florentine merchant called Francesco Lapi, who used it to describe the price of wine. It was also, however, a far more venerable symbol than Tomlinson probably realised.
Previously, had existed in English largely as an accounting symbol, indicating the price of goods: buying 20 loaves of bread at 10 cents each might be written “20 loaves 10 ¢”. It was a good choice on Tomlinson’s part, being almost unused elsewhere in computer programming, as well as an intuitive fit for sending email to another person “at” a particular domain (email itself had existed before Tomlinson’s invention, but only as a means of communication between different users logged into the same computer system). Read more from BBC News about his life and impact. I've written briefly about the history of the symbol in email in my book Netymology, but for a definitive account there’s no better place than Keith Houston’s blog Shady Characters, which tells in wonderful detail the story of how in 1971 a 29-year-old computer engineer called Ray Tomlinson created a global emblem when he decided to make the obscure symbol the fulcrum of his new email messaging system.