Origin of the @ (Arroba)
What would be the Internet of the peculiar arroba (@) that we use frequently in the e-mail addresses? Possibly another symbol would have been chosen, although the selection of this has its reason for being.
HISTORY OF LA @ (ARROBA)
In fact, its origin goes back to the Latin, being a symbol that already was used from Arab time. In addition, the sailors also used to be able to specify the content that they had in the warehouses.
DISCOVER EVERYTHING ABOUT LA @ IN ITS ORIGINS
Although you probably use this symbol every day, you probably do not know what its meaning is. Right now, it is always linked to the use of information technology and technology in general, but it has not always been so.
According to the first references we have, it is a symbol so old that more than 500 years ago, in the same Middle Ages was already used.
It is commonly accepted that the origin of this term comes directly from the Latin of Arabic; In the latter case, would be composed of the words ar-stele that would come to say something like fourth or fourth.
However, the shape of the symbol would be established in the Middle Ages. When the copyists copied a book, they joined the letters a and d to form the preposition ad with the meaning of / to.
This simple gesture could save the work of these by copying the same word for many occasions, which also meant saving considerable time.
Little by little, the @ became popular and spread to other areas such as official letters.
In fact, if we go back to the year 1536, we find a documented letter that would be sent by a merchant from this Seville to Rome. Here we can find some paragraphs where the @ equals a quarter.
"So, a wine @, which is 1/13 of a barrel ..."
It is also known that in some places it has been used as a measure of capacity. For example, in the case that we are talking about an arroba of a certain liquid, such as oil, this could amount to about 12 and a half liters.
But the most curious thing was that it depended on each type of liquid: for example, an arroba of wine could equal 16 l.
We can also find other documents that ensure that this symbol is about an even older date, from the year 1448, where we have seen appear in means of operations "(15 boxes @ 5 dollars each)"; In this case, meant that the value of this box was five dollars.
As a curiosity, when the typewriter arises at the end of the 19th century, this symbol would appear on the keyboard and then evolve until finally found on computer keyboards, as well as portable devices, which we currently have on the market.
THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE @ WITH THE EMAIL
However, using the at sign in email has another story.
The e-mail would be created in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. This engineer was looking for a symbol that could be associated with email addresses to differentiate them from any other Internet resource.
Although, he states, he could have used a comma in a parenthesis or a bracket, these were already being used for other uses, and the current keyboards did not have as much variety of symbols as right now, so one of the few options Presented were the @.
Most curious of all is that a character that was invented in the Middle Ages so that the copyists could optimize their work, end up becoming a symbol of sending emails that, after all, is another way to optimize the time At the time of sending information.
Now you know the origin and history of the arroba.