The Origins of Symbols @ and #

Have you ever wondered why we use specific symbols for certain things? Especially the symbols used in social media. People all around the world use them every minute of every day on social media. However, most don’t even know the history and meaning behind these symbols. And almost all of them were used and created before the internet was even a thought. The symbols I’m referring to are the hashtag (#) and the at (@). These symbols can be seen all over social media sites such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Both of these symbols have huge significance on all these platforms without them they would become bland. Below we will dive deeper and find the true origin of the at and hashtag symbols.

The Evolution and Origin of # Pre-internet

The hashtag sign has gone through many different names through different eras. Some of the few names are pound sign, number sign, hash, and octothorpe. The first name was believed to be called the pound sign. Supposedly, back in the time of the Romans, writers would scribble “lb.” in their writing to refer to pounds in weight. However, most theorize that because of how fast writers were scribbling notes the lb. sign would begin to look like other symbols which would cause confusion in their papers. So, to prevent this problem they began to put a line through the lb. sign. It started to look like something similar to this ℔. Then it changed again to the symbol we all know as a hashtag (#) because it was easier and more effective to scribble than the previous version.

In the late 1800s to the early 1900s typewriters started to gain traction in popularity. Which meant another big change for the hashtag symbol. It was placed and standardized on typewriters and was used as a symbol for numbers. An example of this is like typing “Jimmy was number 1 in the county race for children under 12”, but instead of number 1 this “#1” can be used to denote rank, position, or order in a list. Except even though it was used this way for printing, for handwriting, it was still widely used for pounds. Nevertheless, the hashtag symbol becoming standardized on all typewriters boosted its popularity even more.

Again in 1963, the symbol went under another influential change when touch-tone phones were invented. Engineers at Bell Labs wanted to create twelve buttons for a three by four rectangle for calling. The problem was that the numbers zero to nine only took up 10 buttons, so they needed to find two more symbols to fill the gaps. The two buttons were going to be used for controlling computers and were originally going to be a diamond and a five-pointed star. Although, the engineers at Bell Labs wanted the symbols to be a part of the new American Standard Code for Information Interchange or ASCII system. Both of the original intended symbols weren’t in the ASCII system, so they settled with the asterisk (*) and the hashtag (#) which were in it. The asterisk symbol looked like the five-point star they wanted and the hashtag was a symbol that was a blank slate, therefore it wouldn’t be confusing for users.

Bell Labs called the symbol we know as a hashtag as Octothorpe, which sounds very technical and silly. They named it Octothorpe because the part octo referred to the eight end-points from the lines, while the thorpe part has a less clear meaning. One theory was that thorpe was supposed to refer to the old English meaning of thorpe which was a village because the symbol resembled a village that was encompassed by fields. The other theory was because a researcher employee at Bell Labs was a huge advocate for James Francis Thorpe Olympic medal restoration. James Thorpe was the first Native American Olympic gold medalist in the U.S. The Olympic committee stripped him of his Olympic gold medal because they found out he violated a rule. Thirty years after his death, the new Olympic committee restored his gold medal because they declared the old committee made an error in their decision.

The Skyrocketed Popularity of # On the Internet

The early use of the hashtag on the internet started on Internet Relay Chat (IRC). On IRC it was used to join groups of things like channels or topics. The hashtag symbol was used in channels that could be accessed anywhere on the IRC network. The idea of using the hashtag in this way started to present itself on Twitter on August 23rd, 2007. The tweet on August 23rd, 2007 was made by Chris Messina, who is regarded as the creator of the hashtag, he asked how people would feel about using the pound sign (#) as a way to access groups. He got this idea from the IRC we previously talked about. Another important tweet was from Stowe Boyd which was made two days after Chris Messina's popular tweet. Stowe Boyd’s tweet helped influence the hashtag movement on Twitter and helped coin the term.

Twitter began to take off in popularity in 2008, and so did the use of hashtags. Some popular hashtags were the #askobama and the hashtags pertaining to the Iranian protests. This widespread ever-growing use of hashtags caused Twitter to launch an update in 2009 with a huge change for hashtags. The update hyperlinked hashtags in tweets allowed users to search and see other tweets with the same exact hashtag. And in the present the hashtag is used in the same way, to mark keywords or topics on social media posts and hyperlink them with other similar hashtags.

Even though hashtags have been on social media for more than a decade, some people still make huge mistakes when using them. Hashtags should be clear, concise, and have keywords of the topic someone is trying to post about. They can be used to start trends and protests or add to an already created discussion. A good example of a hashtag if the topic is about the Australian bushfires and saving wildlife, is #Australianbushfire, #Savethekoala, or even #AUSBushfire. A bad example about the same topic would be #Australia #Bush #Fire. This is not an effective usage of hashtags because it doesn’t have a clear message since the words are broken up by multiple hashtags. Each word could come up with multiple different topics instead of the intended one topic. For example, #Fire could come up with the Australian bushfire, but it could also come up with the California wildfires.

The Mysterious Origin of @ Pre-internet

While the background for the hashtag symbol is more concrete, the origin for the at (@) symbol is more obscure. The first-ever use of the at symbol was in a Bulgarian translation of Greek text in 1345, the author's name was Constantinos Manasses. He was a Byzantine chronicler, a person who writes about historical events at the time they happen. The at symbol in the translated text replaced the alpha Greek letter which is equivalent to “A” in the present day in the word amen. The reason for the replacement is considered unknown.

Although, some other theories think that it was from the Latin word “ad” and Monks wanted a shortcut to writing it, so they took the conjoined the two by taking the back part of the letter d and swooping it at the end of the letter a. Another theory is that it derived from the French word for “at” and scribes at that time would swoop the pen above and around the a for ease and efficiency. The last theory was that it was shorthand for the phrase “each at”, the e surrounding the a.

Even though the history is not clear about where and how the at sign came about. The way the symbol was used as a common theme with quantity and size. It was used as an abbreviation for a unit of weight equivalent to around twenty-five pounds that was used by the Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan called arroba. Additionally, it was used by the Arabs for the expression “the quarter”, which is written like this الربع. The first instance it was used commercially was in 1448 in the “Taula de Ariza”, which was a Spanish document for a shipment of wheat entering the kingdom of Aragon. The first modern at sign use though was in a Florentine letter about the price of wine. The at sign was used because it described not only the weight of something but also described the volume of an item.

A more modern use of it that has lasted generations is the use of the at the sign to signify “the rate of” an item. Merchants would use it like 30 wooden planks @ $2, which meant each wooden plank was worth $2 for a total of $60. Later when typewriters were becoming a normal use in society, unlike the hashtag symbol the at sign did not receive the same treatment. The symbol was only on a select few typewriters and wasn’t standardized like the hashtag symbol. This extremely hindered its popularity and use. For this reason, the at symbol was almost a dead symbol that no one really used or paid attention to.

The Revival of the @ On the Internet

That came to an end in 1971, when Ray Tomlinson resurrected the at symbol from its unnoticed grave. Ray was a computer scientist that wanted to solve the problem of joining computers together. Specifically, a message is sent from one computer to another computer through Arpanet. He knew the message address needed the name of the user, the name of the computer, and some sort of symbol separator. The problem in this though is that the symbol couldn’t be something that is already widely in use. Here is where the symbol begins to rise up again.

Ray began to look for symbols that matched this description and he found the at symbol. He said later on that he wanted to save the symbol from the same fate as the cent symbol (₵). He also said that he only had a few options, a comma, an exclamation point, and an equal sign which all didn’t make sense in context. The first use of the at symbol in this way was Ray Tomlinson emailing himself from one teletype to another in the same exact room.

In the modern-day, we use the at symbol regularly, and almost in the same way as its original use. Modern emailing is very similar to how Ray Tomlinson emailed himself in the late 1900s. Email addresses have a username, an at symbol to separate, and instead of the computer name, it has a .com of where you registered for the email address. An example is [email protected]. RosyLee is the user's name that they chose, the at symbol separates the strings, and gmail.com is Google’s emailing service. Another example of an emailing service is Microsoft’s, which is called outlook.com.

Another instance of the symbol being used in the modern-day is in social media sites. Lots of social media sites have adopted a different way of using the at symbol from its original intended way. Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites have gotten rid of the computer name string that comes after the at symbol, and instead, they have placed the username after it. A representation of this is @Rosy_Lee. The at symbol tells the social media app that anything after it is considered a username. People use the at symbol on these social media apps to tag or mention other users on posts.