scerir writes:
> I'm a bit mixed.
You should be shaken, not mixed:
(c) Ray Girvan (raygirvan@freezone.co.uk), April 1st 1999.
^^^^^^^^^
http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20000801/hi%5Fatsign.html
@ Sign Invented in Italy
By Rossella Lorenzi,
Discovery.com News
Aug. 1, 2000 - An Italian scholar has discovered that "amphora," a
word referring to a weight unit used by ancient Greeks and Romans, is
the real name for the Internet's ubiquitous squiggle, the @ sign used
in email communications.
Giorgio Stabile, who teaches the history of science at Rome's La
Sapienza University, traced the origin of the @ sign to at least 500
years ago, when Italian merchants invented it.
The evidence was hidden in the archives at the Francesco Datini
Institute of Economic History in Prato, near Florence: a letter
written by Francesco Lapi, a Florentine trader, on May 4, 1536,
clearly shows what is the earliest known example of the quintessential
symbol of the Internet.
Describing the arrival in Spain of three ships bearing gold and silver
from Latin America, Lapi writes: "there an @ of wine, which is one
thirtieth of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats."
"In the document, the @ sign is the abbreviation for amphora, a
measure of capacity based on the terracotta jars used for
transportation in the ancient Mediterranean world," said Stabile, who
will publish his finding in a book for the Treccani Encyclopedia by
the end of the year.
The sign has been a central part of the Internet since Ray Tomlinson
chose it as a separator in email addresses in 1972. Cybernauts of
various countries have given the sign nicknames from snail to strudel
and monkey's tail, but the @ sign was believed to derive from the
Latin word "ad," meaning "to, toward, at."
The story goes that in late medieval cursive writing the upright
stroke of the "d" curved over to the left making a loop around the
"a."
"This theory has no support from a paleographic point of view. In my
research, I ignored the metaphors related to the sign and considered
the only two denominations with a historical background: the English
"commercial at" and the Spanish "arroba," said Stabile.
Searching the commercial paleography, Stabile stumbled into a
Spanish-Latin dictionary of 1492: the word "arroba" was translated as
"amphora," showing that the amphora weight unit was known both in the
Greek-Latin and in the Arab-Hispanic world.
The amphora was long used as a measuring unit in Venice and along
trade Routes running to Northern Europe. There, it acquired its
contemporary commercial meaning, "at the price of."
"The story of the Latin roots of the sign was completely wrong," said
Armando Petrucci, professor of Latin Paleography at Pisa University.
"Finally, Stabile's discovery sheds light on the history of this
successful sign."
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