Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in English, we call it the AT symbol,
Speaker 1: you know, the lowercase A encased in a curl that
Speaker 1: we put in email addresses and social media handles. We
Speaker 1: are linguistically dull on this count. In Germany it's called
Speaker 1: a clamorophe, meaning spider monkey. In Israel it's called a strudle,
Speaker 1: after the rolled pastry. In Hungary it's a kutz a,
Speaker 1: meaning worm. In Norway it's a hallay meaning pigstail, and
Speaker 1: in Turkey it's called the gull meaning rose. Apologies, by
Speaker 1: the way for my pronunciation on all of those. I
Speaker 1: did make an effort. At any rate, we English speakers
Speaker 1: obviously missed an opportunity to play on the fun curly
Speaker 1: cue shape of the AT sign. But if we're interested
Speaker 1: in the long and fascinating history of this now ubiquitous symbol,
Speaker 1: it's better to call it by its Spanish name, arooba.
Speaker 1: If you traveled with Spanish speaking country today and visit
Speaker 1: the local food market, you might come across a different
Speaker 1: usage of the aeroba that predates email addresses by half
Speaker 1: a millennium. In Ecuador or Bolivia, for example, a large
Speaker 1: quantity of potatoes is often sold by the arooba, with
Speaker 1: one aroba equalling a little less than a bushel, which
Speaker 1: is about sixty pounds or twenty seven kilos. It's not
Speaker 1: a set measure across goods. An aroba of oil is
Speaker 1: about three gallons or eleven liters, and an arooba of
Speaker 1: wine is about four gallons or fifteen liters. But okay,
Speaker 1: what's the connection between adoba the weight and measure, and
Speaker 1: aeroba the symbol on your keyboard. The Greeks and Romans
Speaker 1: used to trade commodities like wine, oil, and olives stored
Speaker 1: in long necked ceramic jars called m foi. For these
Speaker 1: ancient Mediterranean merchants, an emphora was not only a convenient
Speaker 1: storage vessel, but a standard measurement. One amphora equalled a
Speaker 1: volume of one cubic foot, which is roughly seven gallons
Speaker 1: or twenty six and a half liters. Later, Spanish and
Speaker 1: Portuguese traders used a similar method to set a standard
Speaker 1: weight and volume for casks of different commodities. They didn't
Speaker 1: use the word amphora, but rather aroba, a which they
Speaker 1: borrowed from the Arabic speaking Muslims who ruled the Iberian
Speaker 1: Peninsula from seven to eleven CE to fourteen ninety two CE.
Speaker 1: The Arabic al rub means one fourth, and an aoba
Speaker 1: in medieval span and Portugal was a quarter of a quintal,
Speaker 1: a quintal being another historical unit of measurement that means
Speaker 1: one hundred units of weight for whatever system different people
Speaker 1: were using before metric kilos and imperial pounds became standard,
Speaker 1: So we had the words that indicated measurements. Where does
Speaker 1: the AT sign come in? No one actually knew until
Speaker 1: the year two thousand. That's when one Giorgio's Tabile, a
Speaker 1: professor of the history of science at Lasapienza University in Rome,
Speaker 1: stumbled on a letter dating from fifteen thirty six that
Speaker 1: appears to use the AT sign as shorthand for Mphori.
Speaker 1: The author of the letter, an Italian trader was reporting
Speaker 1: on the price of an emphora of wine in Seville,
Speaker 1: but instead of writing out the word amphora, the merchant
Speaker 1: used the AT symbol. Stabile told the Guardian at the time,
Speaker 1: until now, no one knew that the AT sign derived
Speaker 1: from this symbol, which was developed by Italian traders in
Speaker 1: a mercantile script they created between the Middle Ages and
Speaker 1: the Renaissance. The loop around the A is typical of
Speaker 1: that merchant script. When Stabilee looked at Spanish Latin dictionaries
Speaker 1: from the fifteen hundreds, he found that Adoba was synonymous
Speaker 1: with Amphora, so it's very likely that Spanish traders would
Speaker 1: have adopted the same AT symbol to stand for Adoba,
Speaker 1: making the Spanish name for the AT sign one of
Speaker 1: the oldest and truest that we have. In more modern usage,
Speaker 1: the AT symbol became shorthand for at the rate of
Speaker 1: a factory ordering supplies my invoice for one hundred tons
Speaker 1: of steel wire at fifty dollars a ton, for example,
Speaker 1: or a neighborhood grosser would advertise a daily special for
Speaker 1: brought worst at thirty cents a pound. Even though the
Speaker 1: symbol was widely used in business and commerce by the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, it wasn't included in the earliest mechanical typewriters.
Speaker 1: The first commercially successful typewriter, which happened to be the
Speaker 1: first with a querity keyboard, was patented in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight by three American inventors. This shoals and glidin typewriter
Speaker 1: had just thirty keys and no shift function, so it
Speaker 1: only had space for four punctuation marks, a comma, period, dash,
Speaker 1: and semicolon. It also only had capital letters and didn't
Speaker 1: even have keys for the digits zero and one, requiring
Speaker 1: typists to substitute the letters I and O in their place.
Speaker 1: Just like the dollar sign. The business friendly AT symbol
Speaker 1: made its way onto typewriter keyboards by the end of
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, but it would take another fifty years
Speaker 1: for the AT symbol to be invited to the nascent
Speaker 1: computing party. The AT sign was included in the group
Speaker 1: of letters, numerals, and special characters that early IBM computers
Speaker 1: could represent, including punched card systems in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty one, IBM's room sized Stretch supercomputer,
Speaker 1: the fastest computer of its day. However, there's a chance
Speaker 1: the AT sign would still be an obscure keyboard character
Speaker 1: if not for the actions of an engineer by the
Speaker 1: name of Ray Tomlinson. Back in nineteen seventy one. Tomlinson
Speaker 1: was working for a private defense contractor helping the US
Speaker 1: government's advanced research projects agency build what would become the
Speaker 1: world's first remote computer networks, known as arpinnet. Tomlinson's job
Speaker 1: was to write programs that would run on this new network,
Speaker 1: connecting a whopping nineteen different machines in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: Electronic mail already existed in a primitive form at the time.
Speaker 1: Messages could be saved by a user and opened up
Speaker 1: later by a different user on the same machine. But Tomlinson,
Speaker 1: as a side project, wanted to see if messages could
Speaker 1: be sent from one machine to another over arpinnet. There
Speaker 1: was a problem, though, how would Tomlinson direct messages to
Speaker 1: different users on a single remote computer. He needed a
Speaker 1: symbol that would serve as the marker of a name
Speaker 1: and address. Looking down at his teletype terminal, Tomlinson saw
Speaker 1: the humble AT symbol sitting atop the letter P. Tomlinson
Speaker 1: chose the AT symbol for a number of practical reasons.
Speaker 1: A First, it was already common shorthand for at the
Speaker 1: rate of so it made sense as user at host computer. Second,
Speaker 1: it was obscure enough that it wasn't already being used
Speaker 1: in any of the existing names of host computers, nor
Speaker 1: was it being used as a command in his company's
Speaker 1: programming system. Tomlinson wrote up the experimental email program and
Speaker 1: sent a test message to himself at a nearby terminal
Speaker 1: from his brand new email address, Tomlinson at BBN DASH tenxa,
Speaker 1: a BBN DASH tenxa being the type of computer system
Speaker 1: he was working on. So what did the world's first
Speaker 1: email say? Tomlinson has zero recollection, but guesses it was
Speaker 1: something momentous like testing one, two, three four or quarity
Speaker 1: you we up. It's no what hath God wrought? Which
Speaker 1: was the first American long distance telegraph message, but it's
Speaker 1: perhaps appropriate for something that we use so casually today.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article call It Attoba,
Speaker 1: cook Cuts or Strudle The history of the app sign
Speaker 1: on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Dave Ruse. For lots more,
Speaker 1: check out the book Shady Characters, The Secret Life, Punctuation
Speaker 1: Symbols and other typographical marks written by Keith Houston. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot
Speaker 1: Com and is produced by Tyler Klain. Four more podcasts
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