Why is @ on your computer keyboard?

What's the deal with @ (the at sign)? For too long the popular story that Ray Tomlinson saved @ from extinction by using it in email has spread as internet gossip. This story is false, and has been retold again and again without people asking some obvious questions like "Why was there an @ on Ray Tomlison's keyboard?" and "What led to @ being a part of the computer keyboard?"
The truth is that @ has a rich history that can be traced back to the 1300's, and since then has traveled through the Mediterranean world, across continental Europe, and into the printing houses of everyday Englishmen. @ originally was used to represent the word "arroba" (this is still the Spanish and Portuguese name for the character), a term for a unit of weight that was borrowed from the Arabs. Later @ came to be used in place of the phrase "at the rate of" in France and later England and Sweeden. This meaning held through the turn of the 20th century, and @ is still properly referred to as the "commercial at" or "commercial a". By the time typewriters became available to the general public @ was being included along with other commercial keys like the cent sign.
Around this same time electric data processing machines, like the kind made by Herman Hollerith, needed to encode letters and numbers into binary on punch cards. The code used here was BCDIC, which by the 1930's only held 40 symbols, @ not included. It was only when the ENIAC, BINAC, and UNIVAC came along and began to use teletypes as console output and later input that BCDIC was expanded. In 1953 @, along with several other symbols from the teletype keyboards, @ was officially included in BCDIC and was used in IBM's FORTRAN to represent the single quote.
When ASCII was developed in 1963 @ was again included at position 1000000, cementing it as part of general computer encoding. Wherever ASCII goes, @ goes along as well, and there was hardly a computer from that day on that was not compatible with this encoding.
So Ray Tomlinson's keyboard in 1971 had @ on it because @ was already a part of ASCII. His choosing @ didn't save it from being thrown out of the keyboard, although it did manage to give a use to the @ key for non-programmers of the day.
@ is the key with the most unique history on the entire keyboard, and it isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Other great projects: www.notin.tokyo
Use the power of @ to send an email: [e-mail]
Thanks to Ray Tomlinson, 1941 - 2016

[@enkiimuto1041]

In Portuguese @ is still called arroba.

[@chowder-hf8xm]

Spanish too!

[@vencedor1774]

In Spain too.

[@Collidedatoms]

I like the name "Asperand". I have no idea where it came from but I like it because it pays homage to its similarity to the "Ampersand" while still having a name that distinguishes it from that and that sounds cool.

[@Collidedatoms]

Then again, that means that "Arroba" is its historical name. So maybe that should be the name in English?

[@IceBro]

​@@Collidedatoms Nah, language is always evolving and we use @ in a completely different way today.

[@MrCheeze]

Since you mentioned the cent sign... it's funny that it was cut in favour of @, despite having a much more obvious and common use... and in fact has all but died out as a result. I suppose the reason ¢ was excluded in the first place was that on a typewriter, you could make one with c-backspace-slash. So it never got a dedicated key, and therefore never made it into basic ascii...

[@reversev9778]

It also doesn’t help that because of the ¢ sign’s obvious use, it wasn’t as easy to assign new uses to. The @ sign’s lack of an obvious use made it much easier to use as a symbol for whatever you needed.

[@WohaoG]

#JusticeForCent

[@nikdog419]

And now cents are practically worth less. Really need to copy Scandinavian countries and make the dime the smallest denomination of the USD. Though current inflation, we're about ready for the dollar to be the smallest denomination of USD.

[@zym5435]

plus you can always just do $0.01 as opposed to 1¢, for example, if you really needed a cent value for whatever reason.

[@reversev9778]

@@0011peace I’m not saying reusing symbols didn’t happen, just that it wasn’t preferable.

[@thebigcheese1153]

It’s severely uncanny seeing “@“ within old texts.

[@guillermogutierrez710]

Yep, before using a computer, I learned in school that @ was the symbol for the weight unit called arroba, which if I recall correctly is equivalent to 100 pounds. It is cool to think that in Spanish we still keep the original meaning of many words and symbols.

[@rodrigohag]

Moor's heritage

[@erikkonstas]

They teach that in school...?

[@gerardsotxoa]

Yes, about 50 years ago arroba was still very used in rural Mexico

[@miguelj.5292]

In Portugal cork is still measured and traded in arroba, witch is just under 15kg /33 pounds

[@dan-bz7dz]

This is true. But surely this is not why it was introduced on the keyboard.

[@lumipakkanen3510]

Fun fact. In the early days of the Internet in Finland we used to call the "@" symbol "miukumauku" due to its resemblance of a curled up cat. ("Miukua" and "maukua" both mean "to meow".) Haven't verified this so it might've been only the circle of people around me and it's fallen out of favor anyway. These days the symbol is pronounced "ät".

[@MottyGlix]

In contemporary times in Israel the @ symbol is called "strudel" (as in the pastry) when reciting e-mail addresses.

[@mskiptr]

Here in Poland it's called "małpa", meaning a monkey.

[@StYxXx]

@@mskiptr In German it's also called "Klammeraffe", which could be translated as "clinging monkey" since it looks like the tail of one grabbing a branch

[@U20E0]

it’s called a dog in russian

[@jannovotny4797]

In Czech it's called a "zavináč", coming from the verb "vinout se", which means to curl around. Zavináč is also the name of a pickled fish though

[@rairaur2234]

Came for a background little story, stayed for a well-done brief early computers history. Was shocked it's not some already established documentary channel! Great work! Cheers.

[@ItsVasl]

yes, this is an amazing video!

[@ram0166]

A history of IBM disguised as a video about @

[@dan-bz7dz]

If by well-done. you mean blatantly wrong

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

You can say th@ again.

[@gufu21]

@@dan-bz7dz Can you explain what in this video is wrong?

[@Graham_Rule]

The first email system I used actually had "at" between the username and the host. But I'd used the @ symbol in paperwork for many years before that. It was a multiplication symbol symbol in 'commercial' use, e.g. (3 eggs @ 1 penny each = 3 pennies). The lack of that symbol would have held back the development of computing quite a lot.

[@radarmusen]

Also in data sheets like 4Mhz @ 3v.

[@KasumiRINA]

multiplication in computing is kinda ridiculous, as × is too confusing with x or Cyrillic х so obviously not used for that, and dot ⋅ is too small and nowhere to be found on kb... unlike / for division which makes sense as it's also a fraction symbol & you don't NEED ÷, there's no standardization as using asterisk for multiplying isn't ideal with how often it is used, say, in search engines or site code, i.e. if I input * twice here it will make the word look like *this*

[@Sammysapphira]

​@@KasumiRINA * is also used to create a pointer in C and C++ while simultaneously having * as multiplication.

[@snatcc]

Yeah,” @“* IS *cringe

[@alexanderborsch5978]

Found here the explanation I was looking for

[@trevormiddleton]

I worked, briefly, in a sales office around 1978. We fulfilled orders for plastic bags: carrier bags, refuse sacks, etc. The invoices we sent out to customers always included the @ symbol before the price per unit (usually per thousand bags). When I first saw an email address, at university in the 80s, it seemed natural that the @ symbol should be used, because I was already familiar with it.

[@glen1555]

Yes. 15 dozen at 4 shillings a dozen. Or 15 doz @ 4/- doz

[@trevormiddleton]

@@glen1555 Those were still the days of the typing-pool, so our invoices were all handwritten, only letters being designated ‘important’ enough for typing. We used the abbreviation ‘m’ for ‘thousands’, and I still remember the descriptive terms for the bags; for instance: 15m TOTPOH printed @ £5/m … £75 would be 15,000 Turn Over Top, Punch-Out Handle carrier bags printed with the previously agreed artwork @ £5 per 1, 000 … £75 The artwork and printing were agreed on during the earlier part of the sales process.

[@glen1555]

Typing pools - i'd forgotten about them. Rat a tat tat all day long. Presided over by a Dragon woman.

[@trevormiddleton]

@@glen1555 Exactly that, yeah. The only computer was a dedicated microcomputer in the Accounts department, presided over by the formidable Doris. And let’s not forget the telex machine that looked like something out of Star Trek TOS, and was the closest we had to email. All gone now. By the time I arrived at university in the late 80s, after taking a break from education, there were Macs in the Arts Faculty, networked PCs, and we students each had our own email address!

[@snooks5607]

surprised I haven't yet seen it commented that in many countries unit prices were often and still are sometimes marked with the french word "á" (depending on context meaning to/in/at/by/with). actually found some pages saying that might actually be the origin of @ instead of amfora even though it was used for both

[@spilt-milkie]

@h yes, the @ symbol

[@lexnastin9011]

I think you meant: @h yes, the a symbol

[@Scute_King]

​@@lexnastin9011 I think you me@nt : @h, the @ symbol

[@purpleisfizzy]

Oh yes, the o symbol

[@chairwood]

b@ 🦇

[@foxcraft5215]

F@

[@Wmann]

This is honestly well done. The editing, documentation, script, your presentation of them, it’s almost on par with popular related KZbinrs today. Keep going! You’re doing great.

[@roxaskinghearts]

Yeah but not because of emails was clickbait as emails are just what that evolved into and now adays emails are the reason that is there

[@LUKEUNGUS]

Cap

[@samueleproiettimicozzi8134]

​​@@roxaskinghearts nah, the thumb is just completing the title, since the whole video could be clickbait by having a title like this and then everything the video says is "because of emails!". It's a great way to introduce you to the topic, many well-written articles and even academic researches follow this style

[@roxaskinghearts]

@@samueleproiettimicozzi8134 yeah its called click bait liars deserve no respect o yeah i get it everyone els is so easy to fool with nonsense like this and would overlook it or say nothing about it see for someone to claim politician they have to understand nuance of our society today and how it is ran not children who sit there and defend their own idiosyncrasies and i get it im just calling it as i see it

[@samueleproiettimicozzi8134]

@@roxaskinghearts how is it clickbait if the reason the @ sign is on your keyboard really isn't emails?

[@Krasniye]

I think another interesting use from the @ sign is in aviation. In the days that ATC was done using purely pen and paper the @ symbol was the go to symbol for "at and maintain". It's still used to this day. Not an origin story by any means but an interesting side note.

[@TheXBoy5]

An interesting use of @ was done by spanish speakers. Most words in spanish have a gender (street is femenine and tree is masculine). Then there's "everyone". "Todas" is explicitly feminine, so it's only used when "everyone" is female. "Todos" is masculine and can be used for male or mixed groups. However, some people liked to text "tod@s", since @ looks like an a and an o. It was mostly so you didn't have to type "todos y todas" while still taking girls into account. Nowadays most people replaced the @ with e, so they say and text "todes". Using e has a political tone to it, while using @ did not.

[@DestopLine]

Literally nobody uses the e, I've never seen anyone in real life using it, most people say todos, but some people still use @

[@Ayverie4]

As an English speaker learning Spanish in the age of "tod@s", before the "e" came into practice, I felt the political undertone. I always felt it was stupid, as "todos" is already inclusive. Just as "man" once was in English. We are all "men". That is our species.

[@Ledabot]

How many men you sleep with

[@gerardsotxoa]

He's lying, most people is not retard enough

[@KEVINDAVIDBALBUENASALVADOR]

@@DestopLine some people do, but as he said, it has the political implication of being 'inclusive' in the modern sense. I've seen it more often spoken than written though.

[@unitedstatesofamerica9239]

As a programmer, I use the @ symbol to create commands for bug testing. Mostly because it's so easy to find when combing through thousands of lines of code.

[@BogoblinGamer]

As a perl programmer, this doesn't work for me

[@torinnbalasar6774]

If you're in Java, it's heavily used to format Javadoc documents, and iirc is also used to help the compiler for JUnit tests.

[@none-ro9dz]

also python decorators

[@southernflatland]

Meanwhile, I'm a sane person that uses the more recognized but least used letter Q for any test routines while debugging.

[@SergeantExtreme]

@@southernflatland Q looks too much like O. It could easily be passed over when viewing lines of code, especially if you're tired.

[@austinschmuck7814]

As someone who collects typewriters (owning some from 1912 to the 1970s, Including 2 underwood typewriters identical to the one shown in this video), I've often wondered why there's an @ symbol. Thanks for clearing it up.

[@louistournas120]

I still don't understand why there is an @ on typewriters. What did they use it for in the 20 th century?

[@AttacMage]

@@louistournas120 like it said in the video. commercial use.

[@MoreRice28]

c@

[@someonespadre]

@@louistournas120 typed invoice, for example, Widgets 2 @ $1.00, etc

[@spimbles]

woah hey guy calm down, save some women for the rest of us

[@MatthijsKoelewijn]

In the Netherlands(dutch), the symbol "@" is referred to as the "apenstaartje," which translates to "monkey's tail." The name "apenstaartje" is derived from the word "aap" meaning monkey, and "staart" meaning tail. Therefore, when combined, it represents the tail of a monkey.

[@tobe2240]

In Poland it is literally called monkey, and there is no alternate reference AFAIK.

[@stickyfox]

The ampersand & makes a great duck in 8-bit shooting gallery games too.

[@win_ini]

​@@tobe2240małpa I know it all too-well.

[@carlhilber2275]

its actually called ampersand in English, but is colloquially referred to as "at"

[@DestopLine]

@@carlhilber2275 Isn't that &?

[@Hopeless_and_Forlorn]

This video impresses upon me the technological changes I have lived through in my eighty years so far. In 1960 six weeks of my military training to be an aircraft weapons mechanic was dedicated to learning basic electricity. In the field in 1962, one of the new tools we used was an early, automated tester for aircraft and component electrical wiring. My introduction to digital, it was motivated by a five-by-eight punch code in Mylar tapes fed through an optical reader. As a civilian aircraft mechanic I leaned first vacuum tube and then solid-state electronics. The advent of computerized autopilot systems, digital radar and flight management and navigation systems in the early 1980s just about brought me up to date. Today, I call one of my daughters when I need help getting my iPhone to do what I need.

[@firstnamerequiredlastnameo3473]

You're talking my history. Been there, also.

[@4rumani]

Huh, so that's why we call it an arroba in Spanish to this day...

[@perkynson]

I think so?

[@rezenhasqn8308]

in Brazil too

[@CerinAmroth]

In Portuguese too

[@AndreJohnMas]

In French too where it called ‘arobas’.

[@Miniclash]

Funny to note that the @ sign in French is called "Arobase" (pronounced ah-rho-baz) which sounds like it comes from that unit of measurement you mentioned in the video.

[@sacordovaplata]

In Spanish is "arroba"; it never lost its original pronunciation and meaning. now it can mean "at" and "arroba" depending on the context

[@pablocasas5906]

As others said, as a Spanish speaker I can confirm, @ is still called arroba

[@My_Old_YT_Account]

In Québec we say "A commercial" (commercial A) Funny how language changes by just being an ocean away

[@KrissFliss]

In Norwegian its called "Alfakrøll" the direct translation to English would be "alphacurl" or "alpha curl". Alpha is the unit of one, we also used it in the comercial space.

[@glock4455]

In portuguese @ is arroba, just like the video. And the arroba unit is used to this day and is equal to 15kg

[@elin4364]

this video made me remember that @ in swedish is actually pronounced "snabel-a" which literally means trunk-a (as in the trunks elephants have) but I haven't heard basically anyone call @ that in years. I guess "at" is 2 fewer syllables than "snabel-a" so its a lot easier to just call it the English "at" especially when @ comes up everywhere nowdays. idk thats fascinating to me, not only has the choice to use @ in email addresses affected the internet but also how people use language

[@quillmaurer6563]

I was wondering why this was on my 1959 (?) vintage typewriter, this clears it up. Playing with an old typewriter has offered a lot of insight into the design and function of modern keyboards, answered a lot of questions I'd never thought to ask about why they are the way they are. "Caps Lock" evolved from "Shift Lock," which mechanically locked the shift button down, the shift key physically shifting the entire assembly down to use different characters on the type bar (the name doesn't make much sense in modern context but makes sense given this). The "QWERTY" layout isn't to make people type slower as often said, but to have it so that most of the time letters from left and right alternate to prevent the type bars colliding - the one oversight is the proximity of "T" and "H," those are too close together and jam on a regular basis.

[@InkboxSoftware]

In addition, on early computers the caps lock key also locked in the pressed position when it was active, mimicking typewriters

[@quillmaurer6563]

@@InkboxSoftware Interesting - I wonder how similar early computer keyboards looked to typewriters? Though of course later typewriters, especially electronic ones, looked a lot more like computer keyboards than the earlier typewriters that we all visualize. One interesting comparison between the modern "Caps Lock" and typewriter/early computer "Shift Lock" is that Caps Lock only applies to letters, has no effect on other characters: ABC123, while shift lock would give the secondary character for all keys: ABC!@# While writing that, I thought of yet another interesting thing - on modern keyboard the 1 key doubles as "!". My 1959(?) vintage Smith Corona mechanical typewriter has neither of those characters, presumably using "l" for "1" and ' [backspace] . for "!" This perhaps explains why modern keyboards, needing to add both, have "1" and "!" as the same key, the others unchanged.

[@cmyk8964]

Don’t forget the “CDE” cluster...

[@cmyk8964]

​@@quillmaurer6563Exclamation point was, to my knowledge, printed as apostrophe + period. On typewriters as well as in ASCII, the apostrophe was straight instead of curly (like the ones that MS Word replace your boring ASCII quotes with).

[@1toak]

@@cmyk8964 Yes, that's correct for the exclamation point. To be more exact with how that works technically is you type the apostrophe, then hit the backspace, and then finally type the period. The reason for the backspace is because each time you type a key on the typewriter, the carriage advances one space forward. On a vintage mechanical typewriter, the backspace was not a "delete the previous character" as it is today in digital keyboards, but instead, moved your current position back one space. Source: I own a vintage Royal typewriter from 1959

[@blakem2902]

side note: @ (the at symbol) is still called "arroba" in the spanish language

[@annalourdesbatista1473]

Also in portuguese

[@maximinix]

In French: arobase, arobas, arrobase, arrobe, arobaxe, arrobas, or snail (because it looks like a snail shell).

[@jrstf]

Your picture of the PDP-10 (KA10) computer is all the reason needed for @ to stick around, it is used for indirect addressing in MACRO-10 assembly language. Unfortunately, the back arrow character was removed in 1967 but we adapted by switching to the less descriptive "=", and replacing back arrow with "_" in ASCII was an improvement, and at that time lower case was not commonly available so there were few other candidates for removal.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Early ASCII had “↑” which was replaced with “^”, and “←” which was replaced with “_”. DEC’s assemblers for both PDP-10 and PDP-11 families used “@” for indirect addressing modes. The 18-bit and 12-bit machines, being simpler, just put an “I” modifier in the instruction.

[@bxdanny]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 And for some reason, Commodore stuck with those left-facing and upward-facing arrows for characters 95 and 94, respectively, on their 8-bit computers. And early versions of Microsoft BASIC (not the Commodore version) used character 95 (left-arrow, which became underscore) for character delete, and "@" for line delete.

[@feudist]

Well done. As a boomer who didn't get his first computer until age 39, I still remain gobsmacked at the fingertip availability of the sum of humanity's knowledge down to the most granular level. In your pocket.

[@christopherellis2663]

As a 74 year old, I wonder about people who still won't consult it.

[@xarteonarts8446]

The reveal of IBM got me shocked, it's always a great thing to discover the beginning of very important names like the big companies that changed the world back then. You've got a new sub man, love your content

[@glasstuna]

Say potato.

[@xarteonarts8446]

@@glasstuna potato, why?

[@supertron6039]

I have heard many people call it "at the rate" and I never questioned it until now. Makes a lot more sense in the commercial world, especially the example of France you gave.

[@higginsisaac]

Usually I kinda just space out while watching videos on topics like this but this is so well made that it captured my attention entirely

[@seeranos]

Another big reason the @ symbol stuck around is because it was used in some assembly instruction sets to modify the addressing mode for registers, essentially telling the computer, “the value here isnt just a value, its a location in memory”. This is also probably part of the reasoning for making the @ symbol standard for email addressing.

[@seeranos]

@@gabemorales7814 Ah yeah I guess I'm mostly relying on my experience in MIPS for this info

[@Toksyuryel]

Pointers!

[@lwilton]

@@seeranos Doesn't have to be MIPS. We did the same thing in Burroughs from the 1960s. Someone above mentioned the DEC-10 did the same thing.

[@shaihulud4515]

Dude, don't know how you did it - it's entertaining, informative, accurately researched and presented in a appropriate way (in terms of time vs. information density). I just had to like and subscribe in one go :)

[@TrevinAdams]

Great job taking a long history and boiling it down to the key points. Well done!

[@andynl6443]

Also, back in the days no fancy computer screens and before email was a thing: in order to display text "at" an exact location on screen the @-symbol was used, e.g. program instruction PRINT @(5,10),"Hello World" - shows text at position 5 on line 10.

[@alphacompton]

That was fascinating. Thanks for making a vid about it. Didn't realize @ was around for so long and not even used in in writing form before computers were a thing.

[@ranulfdoswell]

The thing I've never understood is why US PC keyboards moved the @ sign to 2, replacing " which was previously on that key on typewriters and early computers. Even its position in ASCII is due to its position on the keyboard when the shift key just used to XOR the key value with 0x20. A lot of Asian countries followed the position on US keyboards, but most of Europe including the UK stuck with the traditional positions. They question is why did anyone move it at all? The earliest "old" computers (that I can find pictures of) with @ on 2 seem to be DEC (VT52 and VT100 onwards) and obviously the IBM PC. But many other common terminals such as the adm-3a had " on 2. Did IBM copy DEC and if so why did DEC move it? The VT52 (1974) has @ on 2, but the older VT05 (1970) has " on 2.

[@krashd]

That bugs the shit out of me, every few years I'll come across an OS where the input is set to US English and typing any command featuring an @ gets screwed up, leading me to scratch my head for a moment or two until I remember to use SHIFT-2 for it.

[@HenryLoenwind]

Just one small correction: Just because a character is in ASCII doesn't mean it will have a key on all keyboard layouts. There are plenty of computers with more limited keyboards and (for PCs) keyboard layouts that e.g. don't include ^, ~ or `. So @ could have easily been dropped if there was no common use and available key for it. There are only 47 character-producing keys on a PC keyboard afterall. Those plus space are 95 different characters, exactly the same number as ASCII has printable characters. Including any additional character (e.g. § ¶ ◄ µ € ² ³) would kick one of those off.

[@KairuHakubi]

yeah it could easily have been replaced if nobody wanted it, but did want something else.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Every computer from about the 1970s/80s onwards supports ASCII, except old IBM mainframes and other mainframes that wanted to be compatible with them. Certainly ASCII support has always been universal among microprocessor-based computers, as well as “minicomputers” from the like of DEC, DG and others. And of course if a computer was going to run a Unix OS, then ASCII support was a requirement.

[@James_Knott]

Yep. The ever popular Teletype model 33, commonly used with computers, was upper case only.

[@combusean]

I'm really curious to see what these keyboards are that redefine what's above 6, because anything doing this would be out of spec with USB HID, in addition to breaking keyboard layout standards on the PC that have existed long before USB. What's on the keyboard are the printable 7-bit ASCII characters which are the original definition, the 8 bit characters didn't come until much later. International keyboards do that and more (like the euro symbol) with AltGr.

[@Anonymous-df8it]

You can add another one by making shift+space distinct from space

[@mattwo7]

You should cover the history of the * and # keys, including their use on phones.

[@southernflatland]

The # symbol is originally known as the octothorpe symbol. In more modern times, it's become known as the hash mark, number sign, and pound sign. I personally refuse to call it a 'hashtag', as it's blasphemy upon the origins of the symbol. It's an octothorpe, look it up.

[@deki9827]

​@@southernflatland I call it a hash. It's easier than fucking octothorpe and it sure as fuck isn't a hashtag.

[@mattwo7]

@@southernflatland I am aware of its origins as being interchangeable with ℔ which is how it earned the name "pound sign" in the first place and how it used to be known as the "number sign" for its use with competition placement designations and numerical designations but most people aren't aware. Not to mention its use in voicemail systems. Also it has historically been known as a "hash" and "hash sign" as well. Also "sharp" because it resembles ♯ , hex in Singapore and Malaysia and square. which is actually ⌗ and not # . There's a whole bunch of other slang terms for it too.

[@RenderingUser]

​​​​​​​@@southernflatlandot called hash It's called sharp I call it hash tho No one wants to say a mouthful of a word every time they refer to this symbol No ones really gonna understand what an octothorpe is anyway

[@southernflatland]

@@RenderingUser I'm fine with calling it the 'pound' symbol, that's what I originally learned it as anyways. It's one syllable anyways. Like who the hell decided to change and complicate that into the two syllable form 'hashtag' anyways? Changing words to more complicated words (more syllables) for no good reason makes absolutely no sense.

[@Mankepanke]

In Swedish, the @ symbol is called "snabel-a", which means "[elephant's] trunk a".

[@Check_001]

So as others mention how this symbol is called in their languages, in Russian it's called "sobaka", literally translating as "dog". Somehow unlike finnish people, it appeared to look like a curled up dog instead of a cat here and a bit resembling bark being called "at" in English XD

[@fitmotheyap]

Meanwhile in my language it's called "monkey" Slavic languages do have some oddities

[@dmitryburlakov6920]

Considering that, if this video is correct, the @ sign appeared in Cyrillic long time ago, I wonder how it got into Slavic languages with all weird names. But it's not only about Slavic as it seems, many many languages have weird names. In Belarusian and Ukrainian it's a Snail, as well as in... Italian. In Ukrainian it's also a puppy. Bulgarian and Polish think it's a monkey. Turkic languages went crazy too: Kazakh -- Moon's ear, Turkish - meat (?), Uzbek - puppy again! Tatar - dog, but I guess it's Russian influence. Almost like the symbol came from nowhere and everyone invented their own names. I guess that's because it's not a letter really, not a word, but just it, a symbol.

[@dontcallmethat7240]

and despite at-sign being non-existant in Soviet Union before appearance of desktops, nobody really knows why is it called dog. I like to say 'commercial at' is borrowed from Tatar et/эт - dog, cause why not

[@anon_y_mousse]

I've always liked the at symbol, and it never made sense that in C and languages based on it that they went with ampersand to indicate address of. I guess if e-mail had become popular before C was designed that it would be the other way around, but for my own language I decided to break from the convention that C uses and instead use the at symbol for my address of operator. I think this video vindicates my choice.

[@zandgall1837]

woah you're right, that's the perfect use for it, i never would've thought about that

[@Kycilak]

@ would be the perfect choice for dereferencing operator more then the address of operator in my opinion. If we had a pointer p, we could look what at the address p points to with @p instead of *p. This would also maybe clear some confusion with using * to declare pointers and also to dereference them which are unrelated.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@Kycilak I don't disagree that it is confusing to use the same symbol to declare a pointer and dereference it, but I'd actually rather not use @ for dereferencing, and instead look to a new symbol, such as $. Consider that what dereferencing really is, is acquiring the value at that address. Obviously using such a symbol would be a bit fraught, but for internationalization of my language it could be possible to use any country's currency symbol.

[@jrstf]

@@anon_y_mousse - My suspicion is the primary reason for PERL to have been discarded is because they used $ to dereference, probably the ugliest character possible.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@jrstf Except that it didn't use it to dereference, but rather to denote that it was a variable, period. Using it for literally every manipulation of a variable is certainly tiresome.

[@AxR558]

Interesting that you mention @ being used to mean versus. It kind of does in US sports like basketball where you'll see matches advertised on TV as Team A @ Team B, I'm sure they actually mean "at" literally, but it's kind of funny how things come back around.

[@KairuHakubi]

I mean hell, versus is latin for 'towards'

[@Pooter-it4yg]

In addition to its meaning of "per" it also sometimes stood for "approximately". Those of us over 50 can still remember these uses.

[@Rocketsong]

I'm over 50, and the tilde ~ has always been used to mean approximately for me.

[@jasonfullerton7763]

The use of ~ as "approximate" comes from the proper mathematical symbol, which is a squiggly equal sign and is not on a keyboard.

[@andypuempel2570]

Great work on this. I enjoy seeing the history of things like this. Thanks for sharing.

[@RJSchex]

Two other uses of the "@" symbol:: (1) the TRS-80 Color Computer used "@" after "PRINT" to print a message at a specific location on the screen. (2) Most early Intellivision video games featured "@" on the title screen, used as a copyright (©) symbol.

[@YoelFievelBenAvram]

@ has also been the default avatar for games with rogue like graphics.

[@MarkFraserWeather]

BBC BASIC used the @ in the @% system variable to control the print format.

[@Brian3989]

My understanding is the @ symbol on typewriters in England came from commercial usage, where in a list of prices you could have ten items priced at 9 pence, 10@9p=90pence.

[@neilwilliams2907]

It's not much of an abbreviation though is it? They could have used it for a longer word than the two letter 'at'. I mean, they both use about the same amount of ink. Not really any kind of saving.

[@nealjroberts4050]

@neilwilliams2907 If you're typing lists it saves a lot of ink regardless. Printing caused a lot of words to shrink in spelling.

[@phil4986]

I am amazed you kept me interested for 7:07 minutes in a video about the @ sign. Well done. Excellent information too.

[@ivanxyz1]

Thank you for this video. Your content is very well organized and presented.

[@delscoville]

There was one on my old VIC 20 keyboard too, but there was also an English pound sign. Both had little use for me back then, They carried over to the Commodore 64, which uses an identical keyboard. Also the Commodore 128 had them too, and that's when I actually started using @ because I first started to use the internet with the Commodore 128D accessing a shell account at the University through a 1200 Bps modem.

[@jeffspaulding9834]

The Commodores used their own encoding system called PETSCII. It had the @ symbol because PETSCII borrowed heavily from the first version of ASCII, which had no lower-case characters but did have an @ symbol.

[@eddymison3527]

In my country the @ symbol meant 'alias' before email became popular in the 90s, by then it became 'at' as it is known today.

[@jpotter2086]

You know you're getting old when you see a topic and reflexively think, "ahhhh, kids..." Nice video, very thorough.

[@emmgeevideo]

First-time viewer -- That was a really clever and well-done piece. I learned a lot.

[@63801170]

I was taught it was the "each" symbol, as the "a" is inside an outer "e". It was used the same as "at", but would say - 10 units "each" $23 = I'm happy to be re-informed and corrected from your video!

[@JayOyster]

I don't think you're wrong. In English, the @ was used on store signage to mean 'each at'. It's an 'a' inside a stylized 'e'. This to differentiate from a group price. Say you had a stack of four tires on display, with a sign saying $6. This could be understand that the tires were four for $6. But if the sign says @$6, then four tires was $24. Whether there was an obscure latinate usage meaning 100 pounds, it was functionally used to mean 'each at' in American commercial environments, the primary place where computers were first created. I've had this argument with people for years, that even pronouncing it as the 'at' symbol is not correct. but you know . . . .lost that argument. :-)

[@andreimircea2254]

@ in other languages (like Dutch and Romania) is called “arond”. I was shocked to learn that English-folks were calling @ “at”.

[@user-np9yf6rz6g]

Always used it notes handwritten shorthand meaning around - as in " I'll be home @ 9:00" is that a connection to arrond?

[@Kiroto50]

Compared to your usual content, this video absolutely EXPLODED. Congratulations!

[@michaelcallummayaka]

You just gained a subscriber. This was fascinating. I never knew IBM started with tabulating machines.

[@mattgio1172]

Fantastic as always!!

[@Ghi102]

I wonder about # or maybe even *, which also seems odd to me as a character. Actually, what about the many different brackets (, { and [?

[@InkboxSoftware]

Here's a great source that was a big help to the research that covers a few of those: shadycharacters.co.uk/contents/

[@marcusaureliusf]

The asterisk * by itself is not that odd, but using it as multiplication sure is very odd...

[@joserodrigues_br]

@@marcusaureliusf sometimes I find the * too graphic a representation... 🤣 I'm a 40 yo still in the 5th grade though...

[@krashd]

The hash and asterisk symbols were on all tone-dialled phones for some reason. They still exist today on smartphones with both symbols appearing on either side of the zero.

[@Sebidkk]

I work for a Keyboard Brand and thats even a new information for me. Thank you very much :)

[@Maddog-xc2zv]

We note research here was done and properly done, something rare these days on social media platforms. Great video

[@Duck-wc9de]

In portugal (and latin languages) we still call it "arroba". As you mentioned it was an unite of measurement that was based on the weigth of a certain amount of carob tree seeds. Carob is "alfarroba" This tree grows in southern Itally, Spain and Portugal, northern Marroco and Algeria and Turkey.

[@Phobero]

We don't call it that in Italy though

[@brandursimonsen4427]

I have always known that @ represents the Latin word ad meaning at. I was surprised to learn that this is not known. It is a combination of a and d. It would be nice with a similar letter for pr., per or pro, meaning for.

[@Woodman-Spare-that-tree]

The abbreviation “pp” stands for “per pro”. It is commonly used when signing a letter on behalf of someone else, usually one’s manager.

[@phpsoftwareengineering]

Fascinating! Thanks for the history lesson. I learned something new today.😊

[@lampmolloy]

this is very thorough and well paced, really nice job

[@tparadox88]

I previously wondered about the origin of the symbol and was satisfied to discover that before computers it was used in commercial notation, which explained to me why it arrived on computer keyboards. I didn't know about the unit of measure, but I do know that in Spanish (at least Salvadoran Spanish), the symbol is still called "arroba". I'm not sure I fully agree with the conclusion that it would still be on standard keyboards without email just because it was included in ASCII. As computers became more general use, it could have easily been replaced with something more relevant to general users, like if somebody developing keyboard layouts decided that the common user was more interested in taking about temperatures than about commodity trades and it caught on, we could have had a world where ° replaced @ before someone invented the user@server scheme. What was on keyboards dictated what went into ASCII, ASCII doesn't dictate what's on keyboards.

[@davidwuhrer6704]

° is also part of ASCII, and most keyboard layouts include it. In old typewriters it was used for composite characters like å.

[@Toksyuryel]

@@davidwuhrer6704 Most keyboard layouts outside the US anyway. Here in the US it's pretty much unheard of to see ° on a keyboard.

[@garreswe]

What a great video! I've wondered a long time about this key and you explained it well. I use Nordic key layout and it's pretty annoying to type @ because I have to press the right Alt + 2 so I have to use both hands. It would be much nicer if @ was on the right side of the keyboard.

[@PitiNasri]

On icelandic layout it's Alt Gr + Q

[@Shifter-1040ST]

@@PitiNasri Same on German layout

[@okaro6595]

How is this different from US layout where one needs to use also two hands as it is shifted? Of course if you twist you can press ctrl-Alt-2 with one hand but why make it more complicated when you have two hands.

[@VioletCatastrophe]

@@okaro6595 On UK layout it's pretty much right next to the right shift, and can easily be done with one hand. US layout is still weird to me, but I still have my UK keyboards from when I moved so I haven't needed to adjust.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Here in 🇳🇿 we mainly use the US keyboard. But on Linux I can define a Compose key, which gives me access to hundreds of extra characters via mnemonic multi-key sequences. E.g. compose-lessthan-doublequote and compose-greaterthan-double quote for “ and ” characters, compose-l-slash for £, compose-slash-equals for ≠ and so on.

[@wixostrix]

This is truly one of the most informative videos I’ve ever seen on YT.

[@Rheinhard]

I believe that the later version of BCDIC which included the “@“ symbol was in fact called Extended BCDIC, or EBCDIC (commonly pronounced “ebb-see-dick” by the grey eminences who had been working with the old IBM 360 mainframes for decades when I worked at Johnson Space Center for NASA).

[@quite1enough]

Interestingly enough the symbol @ in Russia is called - sobaka, literary means "the dog"

[@SuperMustache555]

@ always felt so techy to me, shocked that it has such an ancient history

[@stachowi]

This was very informative and not too long, amazing job

[@philiptownsend4026]

Very very interesting. When I started work in 1971 the Hollerith cards we used by our ADP department in the compilation of the UK's international trade statics and if I remember correctly the computer was a LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) 3. There was a large room called the Hollerith room and the ladies that populated it were calle "The Hollerith Girls". Incidentally, I had Xerox Star demonstrated to me and was a user of only the second Apple Mac 2 in the UK connected to one of the first laser printers in the UK, a modified photocopier. My colleague used one of the first Amstrad PCs. It was our job to look for and at emerging technologies and bring them to the attention of the UK Civil Service and military services to stimulate ideas on how IT could be applied in Government service. They were exciting times.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

LEO ... that’s going _way_ back. Imagine a computer system created by a chain of tea shops! Because their chief statistician saw it as a great way to improve their business, and nobody else had a suitable solution, so they came up with their own.

[@krashd]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 That's like the Dutch Aesthedes computer, a graphic designer didn't like the CAD software available or the lacking abilities of computers so he built the first CAD-dedicated computer.

[@azaria_phd]

1:30 fun fact: in Spanish, @ is still called "arroba".

[@John_Fugazzi]

Thank you for being so thorough.

[@TheTruthKiwi]

First off, very well done video. Second, I knew the @ was there because it is a character in the English, and other, languages. I can see how someone might think it is just for email though. Thanks for the history lesson and well made video. Subbed :)

[@TheBcoolGuy]

I didn't realise it was so old! The Swedish word for it directly translates to "trunk-A" (like what an elephant has).

[@righteousfaust620]

My favorite use of it is in the word Lati@s

[@JohtoGen9]

:o

[@Baer1990]

I'm excited for this video! I always fill out forms with a typewriter and have to use a pen to make the @ as typewriters don't have it

[@Baer1990]

well, I guess I was wrong. Got to check my typewriter again

[@mojoneko8303]

I learned something new today. 🙂 Thanks for the video!

[@sohopedeco]

The arroba is still widely used in Brazil in the cattle market. It equates to exactly 15kg.

[@GraveUypo]

that is an "arroba", which is basically a unit of weight worth 15kg. we use it a lot here in brazil, as that's the main unit of weight used to weight livestock

[@lucasjokiel]

Wow, that's quality content, instant sub. Loved the details, abilty to watch @ 1.75!

[@gwcrispi]

I love how you explain Hollerith cards like they're ancient history. I learned to program using those things...

[@catreader9733]

At 6:49, there is a spoken and visual error: "@ was in ASCII and BCDIC" and both those acronymical words are displayed. However, as the presenter said earlier, @ was not included in BCDIC; it was added during the creation of Extended BCDIC (acronym for which was and still is EBCDIC and spoken within the trade as "EbbSeDick").

[@samgould8567]

This should be a pinned comment.

[@qwertyuiopzxcfgh]

In Dutch it's called _apenstaartje,_ meaning "little monkey tail".

[@weskerish]

We call it Affenschwanz in german "monkey tail" :D

[@qwertyuiopzxcfgh]

@@weskerish I didn't know that Schwanz also means tail, so I was a bit surprised when I read that word 😅

[@martinhaub6828]

I remember using the @ in the Univac 1108 Exec operating system 50 years ago. Seeing it pop up in email made complete sense.

[@dontspikemydrink9382]

great video, quite on par with LGR's series on computer related tech. I think you could speak with a bit more emotion, love for the content and use the music or tunes like LGR's stuff, but this is still very nice stuff. Everything clicked when you mentioned IBM

[@colebot]

After watching this video, it is now seems very weird that we read the @ symbol as 'at' when there isn't the shape of a 't' anywhere in it

[@MarcosRobertoDosSantosJF]

In Portuguese we always read @ as arroba (there was this word already in the language). Before internet, it was used a lot as a measure to weight livestock meat

[@tysoniousmink4683]

Suggestion for future videos: You should get a pop guard for your microphone. The bass pops are very strong on this one and it's not easy to listen to with a subwoofer.

[@ardendarling5613]

Very interesting video! Until know, I wasn't aware the symbol even existed at all before email or computers, I assumed it was essentially invented for the purpose it now serves

[@movingloz]

Wow. That was seriously so interesting. Thanks 🙏.

[@pcachu]

Kind of surprised you were still referring to IBM's character set as BCDIC when the Extended version (which finally included the @) was commonly known as EBCDIC ("eb-sid-dic"). I'm old enough that there was still an EBCDIC-based mainframe when I was in college.

[@thomaschristopher8593]

yeah, I was expecting the name with a prepended E.

[@kalburgy2114]

I programmed on IBM mainframes in Assembler language until 2002. Used EBCDIC.

[@gregsiska8599]

-Took an IBM assembly language course in the 1980's. It used EBCDIC.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

He was careful to distinguish the two.

[@lumipakkanen3510]

Very nicely put together! Now can you tell me why there's a "¤" symbol on my Finnish keyboard? I've used every other symbol printed on my keyboard for a known purpose but never that one.

[@88porpoise]

It was adopted as a generic currency sign. In theory you would have either been able to use that and just mean the local currency or typing it would type your local currency sign. It never really caught on, but it has some niche uses.

[@mellertid]

Seems it also appears on French, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Estonian and Hungarian keyboards.

[@chery_nya]

@@mellertid soviet comuter keyboards and displays also did use this symbol

[@PlanParadigms]

Was in the room at BB&N, Alston MA,, a computer room with TWO PDP-10's and each having a card reader as primary IN/OUT. Ray gave me a demo. A fellow Newton resident may he RIP.

[@misha4422]

Very interesting. Quite the winding route. Well done video. Thank you.

[@gaz9411]

When I was growing up in the late 80s/early 90s my parents taught me @ was used for "around" as in if you were estimating a figure within a ballpark. Made perfect sense to me at the time, it's an a with something round it. Then it became the "at sign" as the internet and email took off. I honestly thought this would come up in the video, but now I know it's been the "at sign" for a heck of a lot longer than they've been alive 😂and now I think about it, it was never something I was taught in school or heard anywhere else... Just curious if anyone else has ever heard it used in the context I had or is it just some mad thing my parents decided? I'm in the UK and my parents came from opposite ends of the country and both seemed to know about it, although one of them may have taught it to the other before I came along... Who knows!

[@michaelj8582]

“around” was acheived by an equals sign with squiggily lines instead of straight.

[@vinylarchaeologist]

Gaz, I used to live in Romania as a kid, and there it was sometimes called “arond”. I always thought that was because of “a” and “rond”, or circle. Which makes sense. But now that you mentioned your story, maybe Romanian just bastardised the English “around”… Mysteries!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

In Unicode, I can find “≈” (U+2248

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

ALMOST EQUAL TO),

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

“≃”

[@bleachno9]

In Spanish, @ is still called Arroba

[@rodrigobelinchon2982]

nunca pensé que fuera la misma arroba del peso , impresionante

[@kitefan1]

🤣Becoming lead, hilarious! Are you going to explain "Hashtag" to the people who don't remember wired telephones? Also, I looked it up once, the pattern on the standard IBM computer input cards had a different pattern from the original Hollerith cards and while early computers used teletype you left out the whole mid range where the input was mostly on card decks and the output was on printed pin-fed paper.

[@marekkoodziejak1513]

It is fascinating how everything has its own history that can be told in so interesting way!

[@nikdog419]

You mean the around sign? 😋 Huh, You never hit the date use meaning. @1700 used to mean 'Around 1700'. Was common in History lectures before the 2000s.

[@SirAU]

Underrated video.

[@kashiichan]

Commenting for the algorithm! Great video, enjoyed it a lot.

[@ColeMayes]

Very interesting, and informative. 😊 When I started learning how to program computers we had to do it with punch cards. That was so long ago I had forgotten virtually everything related to the beginning. Thank you for this video. 🙏 😊

[@James_Knott]

My first programming course was FORTRAN in grade 12. We used pencil mark cards!

[@Dr_Kenneth_Noisewater]

We now know that ENIAC was not the first general purpose computer. Colossus, the programmable digital computer developed by Tommy Flowers and collaborators to crack codes during WW2, is now regarded as the first GP computer. But it was kept secret by the UK government until the mid-70s - long enough for ENIAC to become one of those trivia answers that everyone knows. But the story of colossus is incredible in its own rite.

[@calcubite9298]

I am curious. Did Colossus have van Neumann architecture?

[@Dr_Kenneth_Noisewater]

@@calcubite9298 You can google that. But i suspect you know the answer and think it’s some kind of gotcha. But your agument is not with me. Colossus was a programmable GP computer.

[@calcubite9298]

@@Dr_Kenneth_Noisewater I do apologize. I promise that I was not intending that as a gotcha. I only recently started college so I am learning about ENIAC and EDSAC and other early computers. I barely know what von Neumann architecture even is. I learned the phrase 'Turing complete' mere weeks ago. I'm going to go to the library and pick up a book on computing history as I find it interesting.

[@Dr_Kenneth_Noisewater]

@@calcubite9298 I apologize back, then. I assumed things unfairly. The internet has a way of making me cynical. Yeah the story of Colossus and Tommy Flowers, a postal worker, is absolutely fascinating if you are a computerphile. The story of cracking Enigma is pretty well known, but the story of Colossus and how they used it to crack the much harder “Tunny Code” (aka the Lorenz cipher) used by the German high command is not. It’s told on KZbin by Prof. Brailsford at, I think, Nottingham Univ on the Computerphile channel. Highly recommend! And there is a very thick and intimidating book called “Colossus” which I bought but haven’t yet waded into. The fact that they kept such a ‘colossal’ achievement a complete secret until the 70s is incredible.

[@James_Knott]

It's a stretch to call either fully programmable. They were both designed for specific tasks. In fact, GP computers didn't really appear for years. For example, in the early days of computers, there were some models that were designed for science & engineering and other for business use. They had completely different architectures. For example, the IBM business machines actually worked in decimal & fixed point, but the S&E ones worked in binary & floating point. This continued with the languages, with COBOL for business and FORTRAN for S&E.