Who invented email and where the @ symbol comes from

😉 Greetings to my readers! Every day, each of us sends and receives letters by e-mail. We are so used to the Internet that most of us don’t think about who came up with email.

Who Invented Email?

The first email had something inconsequential, like QWERTYUIOP. That is why no one remembers its exact content.

The @ symbol also appeared in email addresses thanks to the creator of the first Email system, Ray Tomlinson. It was he who added this icon to the Email address in order to separate the domain name from the username.

Who invented email and where the @ symbol comes from

Answering the question: “Why did he choose this particular symbol?”, He said: “I needed such a designation on the keyboard. Which would not introduce confusion and would not be found in any other name ”.

Russians call the @ symbol a dog (affectionately a dog). In other countries, this icon is called differently, but what is remarkable, for some reason, almost everywhere it bears the name of an animal.

So, for Italians it is “snail”, Danes and Norwegians call it “elephant”, and Americans call it “cat”. In the Czech Republic, this sign is called very tasty – “marinated herring”.

In Germany, Bulgaria and Poland, the @ sign is called “monkey”. In Vietnam and Serbia, it is “crooked A”. The Japanese have the most original name. It sounds like a whirlpool.

Where did the @ symbol come from?

The @ sign was first mentioned in medieval monastic records. European monks sometimes substituted the @ symbol for words meaning “on”, “in”, “in relation”. The Spanish and French called the @ sign “arroba” and it was a designation of a measure of weight in denominations of fifteen kilograms.

The official, modern name @ is “at” as used in business. Derived from commercial accounts. So, an entry like 5 @ 6 $ = 30 $ means that 5 pieces of 6 dollars equals 30 dollars.

It was believed that using @ would speed up the writing. This symbol already existed on typewriter keyboards. And it was from there that he moved to the “Claudia” of personal computers.

There are also interesting questions and answers.

More information in this video ↓

Ray Tomlinson passed away

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