@ (the at sign in email)

ops culturenetworking

Ray Tomlinson's 1971 choice of @ to separate a user from their host in networked email.

Sending the first mail between two computers on ARPANET, Tomlinson needed a character that would never appear in a user's name, and @ was sitting unused on the Teletype keyboard while already meaning 'at'. That pragmatic pick made @ one of the most recognizable symbols on earth; in Portuguese it is the arroba, an old unit of weight whose scribal mark it descends from.

Also known as: Ray Tomlinson, at sign, arroba

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