![]() It was also, however, a far more venerable symbol than Tomlinson probably realised. Previously, had existed in English largely as an accounting symbol, indicating the price of goods: buying 20 loaves of bread at 10 cents each might be written “20 loaves 10 ¢”. It was a good choice on Tomlinson’s part, being almost unused elsewhere in computer programming, as well as an intuitive fit for sending email to another person “at” a particular domain (email itself had existed before Tomlinson’s invention, but only as a means of communication between different users logged into the same computer system). Read more from BBC News about his life and impact. ![]() I've written briefly about the history of the symbol in email in my book Netymology, but for a definitive account there’s no better place than Keith Houston’s blog Shady Characters, which tells in wonderful detail the story of how in 1971 a 29-year-old computer engineer called Ray Tomlinson created a global emblem when he decided to make the obscure symbol the fulcrum of his new email messaging system.
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