The French are called arobase, the English at, the Germans Klammeraffe, the Swedish snabela, the Italian chiocciola and we are the "papaya". But how did the famous @ symbol that is used in e-mail?
Although e-mail is characterized as a milestone development in the history of computers and telecommunications in general, few know its creator and the exact date of its inventionThe father of the email is Ray Tomlinson. The exact date of sending the first e-mail is not known, but we know it was at the end of 1971.
The content of the message is also not known, after countless failed attempts to send diagnostic messages mainly. According to Ray Tomlinson, it is most likely that the content of the first e-mail consisted of a sequence of letters such as "QWERTYUIOP", i.e. the first series of letters in keyboard του υπολογιστή PDP-10 που χρησιμοποιούσε. Δυστυχώς, ούτε το “κείμενο” αυτό αλλά ούτε και το όνομα του δημιουργού του πέρασαν στα βιβλία της ιστορίας. Ακόμη και σήμερα, όσοι αναγνωρίζουν το όνομά του Ray Tomlinson τον θυμούνται περισσότερο ως τον άνθρωπο που επέλεξε το σύμβολο @ για τις ηλεκτρονικές διευθύνσεις και λιγότερο ως τον εφευρέτη της εφαρμογής που τροφοδότησε την επανάσταση της ηλεκτρονικής informations.
@ Is one of the most recognizable symbols of today's era. It is part of the online identity of hundreds of millions of Internet users worldwide, and many companies have attempted to appropriate the values they symbolize by incorporating it in their name. About the choice of the symbol, Ray Tomlinson has emphasized that he chose it for two main reasons. Firstly, because of its meaning in the English language (at = at) and secondly because it was one of the few symbols on his keyboard that did not appear in any name, so it would not be a source of confusion.
