{"id":5846,"date":"2012-08-29T15:52:55","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T20:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=5846"},"modified":"2012-08-29T15:52:55","modified_gmt":"2012-08-29T20:52:55","slug":"the-accidental-history-of-the-symbol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=5846","title":{"rendered":"The Accidental History of the @ Symbol"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Tomlinson\u2019s eyes fell on @, poised above\u2009\u201cP\u201d\u2009on his Model 33 teletype.\u2006\u201cI was mostly looking for a symbol that wasn\u2019t used much,\u201d he told Smithsonian. \u201cAnd there weren\u2019t a lot of options\u2014an exclamation point or a comma. I could have used an equal sign, but that wouldn\u2019t have made much sense.\u201d Tomlinson chose @\u2014\u201cprobably saving it from going the way of the \u2018cent\u2019 sign on computer keyboards,\u201d he says. Using his naming system, he sent himself an e-mail, which traveled from one teletype in his room, through Arpanet, and back to a different teletype in his room.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/science-nature\/The-Accidental-History-of-the-at-Symbol-165593146.html\">The Accidental History of the @ Symbol | Science &amp; Nature | Smithsonian Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The bang (!) was also used back then for email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomlinson\u2019s eyes fell on @, poised above\u2009\u201cP\u201d\u2009on his Model 33 teletype.\u2006\u201cI was mostly looking for a symbol that wasn\u2019t used much,\u201d he told Smithsonian. \u201cAnd there weren\u2019t a lot of options\u2014an exclamation point or a comma. I could have used &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/?p=5846\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[317,645,785],"class_list":["post-5846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-networking","tag-email","tag-history","tag-teletype"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5847,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5846\/revisions\/5847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bucktownbell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}