On the Internet, the @ symbol is used as a link between the username and the domain name that separates them in the syntax of the email address.
In February 2004, the International Telecommunication Union introduced a new Morse code for the @ symbol. It was introduced for the convenience of sending e-mail addresses and combines the Latin letters A and C. This fact proves the significance of the symbol.
The history of the appearance of the @ symbol
The history of the @ symbol begins no later than the 15th century. So, according to one of the hypotheses, in the documents of the merchants of the 15th century there is such a mention as “the price of one wine A”, where A, possibly, denotes an amphora. Moreover, this letter, according to the traditions of those times, was decorated with curls and looked like @. According to another version, the @ sign was invented by medieval priests to shorten the Latin word ad, which was used as a universal expression for the prepositions "on", "in" and the like. In Spanish, French and Portuguese, the origin of the symbol is associated with the word "arroba" - a medieval measure of weight, which was abbreviated as @ in the letter.
The modern official name for the symbol is "commercial at". This is due to the fact that one of the meanings of the word at is the preposition "by". And the phrase itself comes from commercial accounts, for example, 5 newspapers @ 3 dollars or 80 shares @ 60 cents. Due to the widespread use of this symbol in business, it was placed on the keyboards of typewriters, from which it moved to computers.
The progenitor of this symbol on the Internet is email developer Ray Tomlinson. It was this person who chose the icon that is now found in all email addresses. When asked why he chose this particular designation, he replied: "I was looking on the keyboard for a character that could not appear in any of the names and, thus, would not cause confusion." The @ symbol came in handy for Tomlinson when he began work on Arpanet, the precursor to the modern Internet. His task was to come up with a new addressing system that identified not only users, but also the computers on which their mailboxes are located. This is why the developer needed a separator, and the choice was made in favor of the @ sign. The first address on the network was Tomlinson's mail tomlinson @ bbn-tenexa.
Why "dog"?
There are several versions of the origin of this word. The first and most commonplace - the badge, in fact, looks like a dog curled up in a ball. The second is that the sound of English at is a bit like the intermittent barking of a dog. According to another version in the @ sign, you can see all the letters that are included in the word "dog". There is also a romantic version, according to which the name "doggy" migrated from the old computer game Adventure. The meaning of the quest was a journey through a fictional computer labyrinth, which was drawn with the symbols "+", "-" and "!", And the monsters opposing the player were designated by letters. Moreover, according to the plot of the game, the player had a faithful assistant - a dog, which, of course, was indicated by the @ sign. However, it is not possible to find out whether this was the root cause of the generally accepted name or whether the game appeared after the word “dog” had already become established.