Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Go go go, let's go. This is Josh. That's man.
Speaker 1: I just did it again. Do you want to start over? Sure? Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
Speaker 1: There's Chuck. I did it again. Hey and welcome to
Speaker 1: the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Let's get started perfect.
Speaker 1: No one will ever know, so. Uh. This is put
Speaker 1: together by our buddy Dave Rouse for how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And this is a great one about the
Speaker 1: at symbol and I love this stuff. This is These
Speaker 1: are the ones that are those uh nice little dinner
Speaker 1: party nuggets that you can whip out in right when
Speaker 1: you can eat dinner with humans. Again, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not obnoxious. It's not one of those that makes people
Speaker 1: roll their eyes. It's a little one where people go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a really cool little nugget. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of an obnoxious one. I know
Speaker 1: what you mean, but like, what is it? What it
Speaker 1: could be an example? Because I know what you mean,
Speaker 1: but I can't put my finger on it. Do we
Speaker 1: have time? I know this is a short I don't.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a specific example, but it's also
Speaker 1: in the delivery too, and the one uh, the one
Speaker 1: way you're guaranteed to be obnoxious, as if someone says
Speaker 1: something kind of cool and you go, well, actually, and
Speaker 1: then say anything else. There's a life lesson from Chuck
Speaker 1: right there. Never say well actually to any human so, um,
Speaker 1: that's true, or push your glasses up while you're saying that,
Speaker 1: right right, that's another two word combination that's awful, like
Speaker 1: canal well actually, well, actually, what we're talking about is
Speaker 1: the at symbol. And in America we have the most
Speaker 1: boring name for a symbol that's basically everywhere in the
Speaker 1: world that has a better name for it than in America,
Speaker 1: we just call it the symbol. It's really functional and functionary,
Speaker 1: I think. So let's let's go around the world, Yeah
Speaker 1: we Chuck. Let's start off in Germany. Yes, if you
Speaker 1: go to Germany, you would call it the Klamarafa spider monkey. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: you have to say spider monkey in a German accent too,
Speaker 1: spider monkey. Uh. In Israel it's called a struddale because
Speaker 1: it does kind of look like a struddle a little bit.
Speaker 1: Um what about in Hungary. Well, in Hungary, you're gonna
Speaker 1: go with a ku kak, I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a kuka. Let's go with that, it's a worm. It
Speaker 1: sounds way more Hungarian. What about in in Norway? Norway
Speaker 1: it's a pigstail, which is a grizz hole. Yes, and
Speaker 1: then it's a ghoul or rose in Turkey. So everywhere,
Speaker 1: and in Spain it's called an a roba. And the
Speaker 1: reason that Spain is worth calling out, it's actually in
Speaker 1: the title of this house stuff Works article from ruse Um,
Speaker 1: is because they think that aroba is actually the oldest
Speaker 1: name for that symbol that we call the at symbol
Speaker 1: in the entire world. That's right. Uh, if you go
Speaker 1: to Spain or any kind of Spanish speaking country now
Speaker 1: and you go to a market, let's say, you will
Speaker 1: see the sign called the aeroba, and it is depending
Speaker 1: on where you are, what Spanish speaking country you're in,
Speaker 1: um it is. It's a quantity. So if you go
Speaker 1: to Bolivia, let's say, and you want potatoes, you could
Speaker 1: get one aeroba of potatoes it's about a bushel, or
Speaker 1: an aroba of oil is about three gallons. Okay, So
Speaker 1: now that you know that you can translate in aroba
Speaker 1: into absolutely anything you find in the market, right, I
Speaker 1: guess no. No, the answer is no, because, for some
Speaker 1: weird reason, in aroba of oil is about three gallons
Speaker 1: or some at each point three leaders, and aroba wine
Speaker 1: is over four gallons. It's fifteen point one. This makes
Speaker 1: zero sense at all. Yeah, I think you just have
Speaker 1: to know what product you're getting what an aeroba is
Speaker 1: equivalent to. Yes, you do. And that's weird because measurements
Speaker 1: are meant to standardize things, and you standardized liquid or
Speaker 1: you standardized mass. But the Spanish said, no, we're not
Speaker 1: doing that. We're going our own way. Um, why don't
Speaker 1: you just have some of our delightful topics and stop complaining?
Speaker 1: That's right? But Rus do then and got his hands
Speaker 1: on a book from Keith Houston or Houston Shady Characters
Speaker 1: colon the Secret Life of punctuation symbols and other type
Speaker 1: of graphical marks, And in that is a two part
Speaker 1: history of the AT symbol, where Mr Houston or Houston,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one it is. I'm going to Houston.
Speaker 1: I think George is the only place in the world
Speaker 1: that pronounces at Houston. Oh wait, no, that's what they
Speaker 1: call that street in New York too, don't they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you said Houston Street in New York, They're like, get
Speaker 1: a rope. Hey, is that at the corner of Houston
Speaker 1: and Avenue of the America's You know, I was referencing
Speaker 1: the famous Pace Picante commercial. Oh yeah, New York City,
Speaker 1: get a rope. So anyway, Greeks and Romans, Mr. Houston
Speaker 1: points out, were the first people that were trading these
Speaker 1: commodities uh in markets and using something called uh m
Speaker 1: for a as the measurement. It was the ceramic sort
Speaker 1: of long necked ceramic jar. Yeah, with the two handles
Speaker 1: called an M sorry M for a. Yeah, that's plural, right,
Speaker 1: and I was about seven gallons. So that was Greece
Speaker 1: and Rome. Then the Spanish and Portuguese picked it up
Speaker 1: for their commodities, but they called it the aroba. They did,
Speaker 1: but not at first. Apparently a roba comes from um
Speaker 1: the Arabic for al rub, which means one fourth or
Speaker 1: a quarter, and the ancient Portuguese and Spanish traders worked
Speaker 1: pretty closely with some of the Moors who lived in
Speaker 1: the area as well, and actually ran the place for
Speaker 1: about seven hundred years or more, get it or more,
Speaker 1: and so that the that Arabic rubbed off al rub
Speaker 1: rubbed off onto the Spanish and Portuguese. I don't know
Speaker 1: where all this word play is coming from. It's making
Speaker 1: me panic a little bit. But the point is is
Speaker 1: in aroba did not necessarily stand in for amphora. It
Speaker 1: meant a quarter of something, or about twenty five pounds,
Speaker 1: and then eventually it's somehow made the switch over to
Speaker 1: be the same thing as an amphora, which again is
Speaker 1: that vessel that's used for storage but also a unit
Speaker 1: of measurement, usually a liquid measurement. And some researcher figured
Speaker 1: out that somewhere between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Speaker 1: and flora and arooba became synonymous with one another. That's right,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna take a little break and we'll tell
Speaker 1: you what all of this has to do with the
Speaker 1: AT symbol right after this. Well, now we're on the road,
Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
Speaker 1: two from Josh man Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: all right, alrighty, So we've been talking a lot about
Speaker 1: these words that are units of measurement, But what has
Speaker 1: this all got to do with the AT sign, what
Speaker 1: we call the AT sign uh. An Italian historian found
Speaker 1: this out in two thousand, a man named Giorgio Stabile.
Speaker 1: He's a professor of history in science or history of
Speaker 1: science at La Sapiens University in Rome, and he found
Speaker 1: a letter from fifty six that showed the AT symbol
Speaker 1: as used as a shorthand for amphora. Yeah, the guy
Speaker 1: there it is the first one. Yeah, the the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote the wrote the letter back in six, Francesco Loppy.
Speaker 1: He was describing an amphora of wine, but rather than
Speaker 1: use the word amphora, he used the AT symbol. And
Speaker 1: it's like you're saying, as far as anybody can tell,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the first use of that ever. And
Speaker 1: then the fact that um in Spain that this was
Speaker 1: the same thing as amphora. It shows that since we
Speaker 1: know that amphora and uh aroba or became interchangeable, then
Speaker 1: that we know that Aroba is the oldest known descriptor
Speaker 1: of what we call the AT symbol here in the States,
Speaker 1: that's right. And then here in the States, and we're
Speaker 1: getting to how it became like twitter handle. Yeah, just wait, everybody,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it in part three of this episode.
Speaker 1: This is sort of a long one for a shorty,
Speaker 1: but that's right. Um. Here in the States, it became
Speaker 1: known as just shorthand for at the rate of something.
Speaker 1: So if you were, uh, if you worked at a
Speaker 1: warehouse or whatever, and you're filling out your order form,
Speaker 1: you would say, I need a hundred tons of of
Speaker 1: whatever at this price per ton, and you would use
Speaker 1: that little AT symbol and they'll say, nice, try, We'll
Speaker 1: be telling you what price you're going to be paying. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of the way it was used in
Speaker 1: America and our commerce. It was just like, this is
Speaker 1: at the rate of this, and that's what this little
Speaker 1: symbol means. And um, I mean that's basically what it's
Speaker 1: always meant in English, at least or in the United States. UM.
Speaker 1: And it still is use that, yeah, for sure, for sure. UM.
Speaker 1: We never used it to equate amphora or any kind
Speaker 1: of unit of measurement. It was just like you said,
Speaker 1: at the rate of um. But we typically tend to
Speaker 1: think of the AT symbol as a a keyboard key.
Speaker 1: But it didn't make it onto keyboards as at least
Speaker 1: in the form of typewriters until I think the brown
Speaker 1: the turn of the nineteenth century, and typewriters have been
Speaker 1: around for a while before them, but they were not
Speaker 1: like the kind of keyboards that we understand now. They
Speaker 1: only had the letters are the numbers two through nine
Speaker 1: on them, all the letters of the alphabet, so they
Speaker 1: didn't have any room for any kind of fancy AT
Speaker 1: symbol or anything like that. Yeah, the the dollar sign
Speaker 1: and the AT symbol came about, like you said, the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century, and then in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: the AT sign was made or I was added to
Speaker 1: the binary code decimal interchange code, the b C D
Speaker 1: I C, which were these forty eight characters that were
Speaker 1: printed on those punch cards, those early computer punch cards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they used their word code twice in that I know,
Speaker 1: binary coded decimal interchange code. So um so kind of
Speaker 1: made it's on trade into computing all the way back
Speaker 1: in the fifties, and then by nine sixty one IBM
Speaker 1: used it in its programming code. Uh, and it's one
Speaker 1: of its early supercomputers, the Stretch. UM. So from that
Speaker 1: moment on, the AS sign has always kind of been
Speaker 1: there hanging around, but it wasn't until ninety one when
Speaker 1: a guy named Ray Tomlinson, who was working UM with
Speaker 1: the Advanced Research Project Agencies, first stab at what would
Speaker 1: become the Internet arponnet. That it became um the symbol
Speaker 1: that we know and love today, which is the thing
Speaker 1: the fulcrum that an email address moves up and down on.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I'd love that word up and down on
Speaker 1: on fulcrum. Fulcrum is pretty great, so great. So his
Speaker 1: job there was to write programs that we're going to
Speaker 1: run on this arponnet network. And he was connecting nineteen
Speaker 1: computers in nineteen seventy one, and the electron mail at
Speaker 1: the time was basically it was very cute. It was
Speaker 1: basically a message that you could save on a computer
Speaker 1: and then opened later by a different person, but on
Speaker 1: that same computer, no one was sending anything at the time.
Speaker 1: It was like a digital post it basically, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It would have probably been more efficient to just leave
Speaker 1: a post it was, but they were trying to electrify
Speaker 1: or I guess digitize everything, right, it's electrifying. So he said,
Speaker 1: you know what, what would be really cool is if
Speaker 1: I could take this little digital post it note and
Speaker 1: actually send it across the room to that computer that
Speaker 1: I'm connected to. How can I do this? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he figured out that there was a I don't know
Speaker 1: if an easy way to do it is the right
Speaker 1: way to put it. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: he had to to establish was how to identify one
Speaker 1: computer from another as far as you know, the protocol
Speaker 1: was concerned. And so he came up with email addresses
Speaker 1: basically what we would call email addresses today. Um. And
Speaker 1: that he inserted the AT symbol basically for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. One, it already made sense as AT because
Speaker 1: it was at the rate of so AT's right there
Speaker 1: in the in the thing the symbol stands for. It's
Speaker 1: not like some big stretch of the imagination when you
Speaker 1: see that. Yeah, he just meant that this computer to
Speaker 1: go to that one at at that one over there,
Speaker 1: or this user at this computer or something like that.
Speaker 1: And so Um. The other thing was that it hadn't
Speaker 1: really been used in any of the coding language that
Speaker 1: ARPA net was was based on, So it was kind
Speaker 1: of like a free symbol just hanging out there. And
Speaker 1: that's how AT got drafted into becoming one of the
Speaker 1: most most used symbols in computer programming today. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: sent that very first test message to um what we
Speaker 1: think is the very first email address Tomlinson at BBN
Speaker 1: dash uh ten exa full stop. Right, you're waiting for
Speaker 1: dot something but dot EU. Yeah, they didn't need it
Speaker 1: at the time. I guess, so that's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how they add symbol became so great, so so great.
Speaker 1: Love it, uh and I guess since Chuck said love it,
Speaker 1: that's it for short Stuff, which means short Stuff is out.
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