We Use It with Every Email

First Published Jan. 15th, 2021

Throughout the day, we find ourselves typing emails using the @ or “at sign.”

Where did this symbol originate? Who used this punctuation mark in the first email message, and what year did it occur? In a New York Times blog, called The Lede, I read an article saying the first use of the @ symbol was in 1536.

Though I entered this world during the 1950s, even I know there wasn’t an email system 485 years ago during the Medieval period.

During the medieval years, people sending paper parchment correspondence used private messengers, including healthy and very physically fit relay-runners.

Riders upon horseback, mules, and donkeys carried attachments containing Medieval paper messages.

During the medieval period, most messages sent during times of war were “coded.”

In this case, the code is the messenger wearing an innocent disguise, hiding the message inside their clothing, shoe, or walking staff.

As a youth, I recall seeing the @ symbol used on signs at the local stores.

A sign on a shelf advertising a product would say, “5 cartons @ $1.99 each.”

The Italian newspaper “La Repubblica,” reported in 2000 that Giorgio Stabile, a professor of the history of science at La Sapienza University in Rome, had found the @ symbol used in a Medieval merchant’s letter used for conducting commerce.

The letter containing the @ sign was by a Florentine merchant named Francesco Lapi.

Lapi used the @ in a hand-written letter he wrote May 4, 1536, to describe units of wine, called amphora, shipped in clay jars.

According to Stabile, Francesco Lapi’s letter sent from Seville, Spain, to a Rome colleague, described the cargo on the three ships that had just returned to Spain from Latin America.

“There, an amphora of wine, which is one 30th of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats,” Mr. Lapi wrote in his letter.

Lapi represented “amphora” with the letter “a” wrapped in its tail, appearing as the now-familiar @ sign.

The @ sign found its way onto typewriter keyboards as an accounting shorthand phrase meaning “at the price of.”

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson, an engineer and computer programmer, used the @ symbol on his teletype keyboard, embedding the @ punctuation character in the first email address.

Using the @ symbol, he could send a mail message electronically to another computer system over the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).

The ARPANET, as you know, is the predecessor of today’s internet.

Tomlinson developed his unique @host email system by combining the computer programs SNDMSG, a local inter-user mail program, with CPYNET, an experimental file transfer program.

Asked why he chose the @ sign, Tomlinson replied, “The primary reason was that it made sense. Amphoras didn’t appear in names so there would be no ambiguity about where the separation between login name and host name occurred. I used the ‘at sign’ to indicate that the user was at some other host rather than being local.”

The first email message was sent in late 1971 by Tomlinson between two host computers physically located side-by-side on the same floor. The network connection was through the APRANET.

Tomlinson said the first email message he sent likely contained the word “QUERTYIOP or something similar.”

Asked if he invented the @ sign, Tomlinson responded, “No, I did not invent the at sign! The at sign has been around for centuries. It’s possible I saved the at sign from extinction since some were considering removing the at sign from the keyboard and it would have followed the cent sign into exile.”

You can see a photograph of the two computers and teletype machines from which the first email message was sent and received through the ARPANET at https://bit.ly/3hZX3NE.

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson passed away March 5, 2016, at age 74.

My email address is bitscolumn@gmail.com.

Continue to stay safe out there.

⬤