What is the name of the dog sign. The "dog" icon on the keyboard: how to type, why it's called that
When was this sign first used and what does it mean?
The history of the symbol "dog" @
According to the researcher, this symbol appeared long before the Internet in the distant Middle Ages. The clergy who created the manuscripts used it to denote "direction", "approach", "belonging", since in English this icon denotes the preposition "at", which can be translated into Russian as, "k", "v", "on".Much earlier in 15 century, historians found out that the "@" sign had a different meaning. It was used to designate a measure of volume - an amphora, which was equal to 12,5 kg.
This symbol was again remembered in 1971 year, thanks to a man named Ray Tomlinson. When sending an email, it was suggested to separate the username from the hostname, essentially meaning the same "at" preposition. Since that time, this sign"@" essentially becomes the designation for the entire Internet and is used with great success on the World Wide Web today.
Why is the "@" symbol called "dog"?
It was called that at the beginning of the formation of the Russian part of the Internet, apparently it seemed to someone that the "@" symbol was somewhat reminiscent of a dog. In other countries, people's fantasy worked differently, it is called: "cinnamon bun", "cat", "elephant ", "snail", "monkey".Many do not understand at all what the person was guided by when calling the symbol "@" - "dog". It looks like a snail, it even looks like an elephant, but it doesn’t “pull” at all like a dog. The maximum that this image looks like is like a small cat comfortably curled up in a ball.
American programmers in their circles call this symbol "dog shit", which in Russian means "dog poop". Most likely it was this expression that was the starting point of the Russian designation of the symbol "@". The word "turd" was not used and was discarded because it was clearly indecent. Therefore, the word "dog" remained.
It is unlikely that among the Internet audience there will be a person who is unfamiliar with this @ symbol. On the web, it is used as a separator between username and hostname in email address syntax.
Some figures in the Internet space call this symbol "one of the main pop symbols of our time, a sign of our common communication space." Somewhat grandiloquently, in my opinion, but the following fact testifies to the worldwide recognition of this symbol, and as it is even sometimes noted, “canonization”.
In February 2004, the International Telecommunication Union introduced a code for the @ symbol ( - - - ) in Morse code, to facilitate the transmission of email addresses. The code combines the Latin letters A and C and reflects their joint graphic writing.
The search for the origins of the @ symbol takes us back at least to the 15th century, and perhaps even further, although linguists and paleographers still disagree on this issue.
Professor Giorgio Stabile put forward such a hypothesis. A 16th-century document written by a Florentine merchant mentioned "the price of one A of wine" (possibly an amphorae). At the same time, the letter A, according to the then tradition, was decorated with a curl and looked like @.
The American scholar Berthold Ullman suggested that the @ sign was invented by medieval monks to shorten the Latin word "ad", which was often used as a universal word meaning "on", "in", "in relation", etc. In the script used by the monks, the letter "d" was written with a small tail, and this made it look a bit like the number "6" in a mirror image. So the preposition "ad" became the symbol @.
Be that as it may, this innovation was soon adopted by merchants: one of the first to use the symbol outside the walls of the monastery was the Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi, who in one of his letters designated an amphora as a “dog”, a standard measure of volume in those days, approximately equal to 26 -ty l.
In Spanish, Portuguese, French, the name of the symbol comes from the word "arroba" - an old Spanish measure of weight, approx. 15 kg. (according to other sources, 11.502 kg), which was abbreviated on the letter with the @ sign.
During the Renaissance, the @ sign began to be used to indicate the price, but in the era of the industrial revolution, the @ sign began to appear in the reports of accountants. The modern official name for the symbol "commercial at" comes from bills, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates to 7 widgets. 2$ = 14$. Since this symbol was used in business, it was placed on the keyboards of typewriters and from there migrated to the computer.
We owe the distribution of this symbol on the network to the forefather of e-mail, Tomlinson. He was the one who chose the @ symbol.
Here we need to digress a bit and enlighten you about what Tomlinson did and why it is he who is considered to be the inventor of email, and at the same time the @ sign, when in fact he did neither. The company where Tomltson worked became a member of the ARPANet project, a computer network for the US Department of Defense, around the late 60s. This network was the forerunner of the Internet. In those years, there were already several programs that were able to transfer a file or message from one person to another. But the sender and recipient needed to use the same computer. As for the modem, even the fastest at that time worked about 200 times slower than a modern ordinary one, which allows you to download information at a speed of 56.6 Kbps.
Tomlinson was just at that time developing a mail program and creating a virtual mailbox. In fact, the email box of that time was a file that differed from the usual one in only one feature - users did not have the opportunity to correct the sent text, but only add something of their own. Only two programs were used in such an operation - SNDMSG in order to send the file and READMAIL in order to read it.
Tomlinson also wrote a new program, which consisted of 200 lines of code. Such a program was a cross between the above two programs and the CPYNET protocol, which was used on the ARPANet to send files to a remote computer. Tomlinson's first experimental message was sent from one computer in the lab to another.
In order to forward the file, Tomlinson spent about six months until he managed to send a message to a computer that could indeed be considered remote.
Of course, not very many people knew about Tomlinson's success, only a circle of colleagues, since the merit was not covered anywhere.
Well, now you can return to the "dog". Tomlinson used a 33 Teletype keyboard. And one day he needed a fairly unique symbol that had not been widely used before. Such a character was not supposed to appear in any name or name, and it also had to separate the username and computer name. An algorithm should have been obtained according to the type of name - symbol - place.
In addition to numbers and letters, there were punctuation marks on the keyboard, as well as @. But after 1971, the keyboard model has changed.
@ was the simplest solution to such an algorithm. According to Tomlinson himself, this was the only option. When asked much later why he chose this particular icon, he replied simply: "I was looking on the keyboard for a character that could not appear in any name and cause confusion."
Clickable
In 1963, the ASCII standard encoding appeared, among the 95 printed characters of which there was also a “dog”, and in 1973, members of the Internet Engineering Taskforce secured the use of a character when separating a name and domain - this idea in 1971 th year put forward by the programmer Ray Tomlinson.
Such a symbol was needed by Tomlinson at the time when he was working on the creation of a messaging system in the Arpanet network (the progenitor of the Internet). In fact, he had to come up with a new addressing scheme that would identify not only the recipients, but also the computers on which their mailboxes were located. To do this, Tomlinson needed a separator, and his, in general, random choice fell on the @ sign.
The first network address was [email protected] The mass "dog" became in 1996, when the Hotmail service appeared.
About a year after the events described above, Vintan Cerf and Bob Kahn invented a protocol called TCP/IP. And this was also mentioned for a long time only in narrow circles.
In general, the history of the Internet is quite recent, all historical figures are still alive, so it would be fair to mention the people who had a hand in creating e-mail.
One of the creators is Douglas Engelbart (here is the story of this invention). He made a computer mouse and created the first text messaging system. After that, Tomlinson presented it in the form of an envelope with the field of the recipient, sender and address and the text of the letter. After that, the program was processed by Lawrence Roberts, who came up with a list of letters, reading the letter selectively and saving the information in a separate file and forwarding.
Tomlinson, it should be noted, was quite amused by the hype that unfolded on the 30th e-mail.
Despite the fame that has descended on him, he comes across as an ordinary person, although he scoffs at the fact that e-mail, according to everyone else, appeared in one day. And it wasn't 30 years ago either. The history of the @ sign is a rather funny epic that is connected with the first message. There are two legends about this.
The first version of what was contained in the historic first letter was that Tomlinson typed QWERTYUIOP - that is, the entire top row of letters from left to right. On this occasion, journalists raised a lot of noise. They were interested in what was written, and clearly expected something significant and symbolic. Since Tomlinson was by no means a public person, he did not realize that he could say anything.
He quite honestly answered about the body of the letter, since he did not suspect at all that it could turn out to be historical. But journalists need zest, not platitudes. Therefore, I did not really want to inform everyone that the letter turned out to be a random set of letters. Therefore, QWERTYUIOP appeared. And the engineer does not think to refute this version.
And the second version is that he wrote a quote from Lincoln's Gettysburg speech. One must think that the scientist is simply teasing journalists to the fullest and scoffing as best he can. It would be strange if he actually wrote something sublime in every experimental letter. But the journalists liked this version enough, and they began to repeat it.
In Russia, users most often refer to the “@” symbol as a “dog”, which is why e-mail addresses formed from personal names and surnames sometimes take on unexpected coloring. It is curious that this symbol is used in their work by both folk talents (for example, the joke: “The dog is gone, @ do not offer”), and official jokes - KVN players (for example, “ [email protected]»).
But still: why "dog"? There are several versions of the origin of this funny name.
First, the badge really looks like a curled up dog.
Secondly, the abrupt sound of the English “at” is a bit like a dog barking.
Thirdly, with a fair amount of imagination, you can consider almost all the letters included in the word “dog” in the outlines of the symbol, well, perhaps, with the exception of “k”.
But the most romantic is the following legend: “Once upon a time, when computers were large and displays were exclusively text, there was a popular game with the simple name “Adventure” (“Adventure”). Its meaning was to travel through a computer-generated labyrinth in search of treasures and battles with harmful underground creatures. At the same time, the labyrinth on the screen was drawn with the symbols "!", "+" and "-", and the player, treasures and hostile monsters were indicated by various letters and icons. Moreover, according to the plot, the player had a faithful assistant - a dog who could be sent to the catacombs for reconnaissance. And it was denoted, of course, by the @ sign.
Whether this was the root cause of the now generally accepted name, or, conversely, the icon was chosen because it was already called that, the legend is silent about this.
In fairness, it should be noted that in Russia a “dog” is also called a dog, a frog, a bun, an ear, a ram, and even a kryakozyabra.
In other countries, this symbol is associated with different objects. The following is a far from complete list of how the "@" symbol is called in other countries.
Italians say “chiocciola” (“snail”), in Greece it is known as “παπακι” - “duck”, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia - “zavináč” - rollmops - (“herring roll” or marinated herring), in Taiwan use the concept "小老鼠" (pronounced "xiao lao shu") - "mouse", in Israel the name "שטרודל" - "strudel" is common, and in Kazakhstan the sign is called "aiқұlaқ" - "ear of the moon".
Bulgaria - klomba or maimunsko a ("monkey A"),
Netherlands - apenstaartje ("monkey's tail"),
Spain - like the measure of weight "arroba",
France - the same measure of weight "arrobase",
Germany, Poland - monkey tail, monkey ear, paper clip, monkey,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden - "snabel-a" - "snout a" or elephant trunk,
America, Finland - cat,
China, Taiwan - mouse,
Turkey - rose,
in Serbia - "crazy A",
in Vietnam - "twisted A",
in Ukraine - “ravlik” (snail), “doggie” or, again, “dog”.
As you can see, for many nations, the @ sign evokes an association with a snuggly animal, for some with an appetizing strudel or herring roll, the poetic Turks compared it with a flower, but the disciplined Japanese use the English “attomark” without any poetic comparisons.
sources
http://www.factroom.ru/facts/40864#more-40864
http://shkolazhizni.ru/archive/0/n-7999/
http://viva-woman.ru/novosti-so-vsego-sveta/kak-pojavilsja-simvol-sobaka.html
The dog icon familiar to every web user has been around for much longer than email. But it wasn't until the advent of the Internet that the rounded squiggle became widely known: 2 billion times a day @ takes its place between the sender's name and the server's domain name. Who and how guessed to put the dog icon in the mail address? And why a dog?
A long time ago, when (oh, horror!) There was no e-mail, no computers, not even electricity, all books were filled out by hand. No, then the dog badge was not written in the address, but it performed a completely noble function: it saved the time of clerks who painstakingly worked in the semi-darkness, half-bent position and holding the paper on their knees. Why in such an uncomfortable position remains a mystery. But if you imagine several hours in this position, and work with pen and ink, it becomes clear how much easier all kinds of ligatures made the work.
The dog icon is read in English as “At”, which is translated into Russian as “on, in, on”. This sign denoted belonging to something, was used in exchange accounts, and today more often indicate a specific place or event. In the Middle Ages, instead of "At", they used the preposition "Ad" - to, at, on, at, before. And the letter "d" was decorated with a long ponytail thrown to the left. The ligature @ was formed by the merger of the letters "a" and "d", and, by and large, the history of the creation of the dog icon is the history of medieval writing in Europe.
In Brazil, Spain and Portugal, a similar symbol denoted a measure of weight and volume equal to one arroba. And although historians doubt that it was the same @, but the capital "A" with a curl, decorating jugs of wine or oil, really resembles an electronic "dog".
Before putting the dog icon, translate the keyboard into English. language. Then, while holding shift, press the number 2. If you are working in Word, open the insert - symbol - tab "characters", select "plain text - basic Latin". In Unicode, @ is denoted by the number 0040, and in Morse code by the character set: dot - dash - dash - dot - dash - dot.
Every European trader who lived during the Renaissance knew perfectly well how to write a dog badge in the most profitable way: a twisted elegant @ was located in front of the price of the goods, and was supposed to attract the attention of passers-by. Later, this ligature began to be used in accounting, for example: 12p @ 6$ - 12 pieces for 6 dollars.
The following fact is not directly related to the dog icon, but is so curious that it would be wrong not to mention it. In the 15th century, when post offices were not even dreamed of in your hometown, letters were delivered by foot or horse messengers. They announced their arrival to the population by blowing a horn similar to that used by merchants, itinerant artists, etc. From the end of the XVI - beginning of the XVII centuries. horns were forbidden to be used by anyone except postmen. Today, the image of crossed post horns can be seen on envelopes, stamps, postcards, etc. A simple tool has become a symbol of mail, recognizable all over the world. So, the dog icon in the address is very reminiscent of the outline of a horn, which is undoubtedly a curious coincidence. And how interesting it turned out: the symbol
"virtual" mail accidentally repeated the outlines of the real mail symbol!
This symbol is known to any Internet user, since it is directly associated with e-mail. In Russia, he was nicknamed "The Dog" (and also - krakozyabra, a-with-tail, cheesecake, masyamba), in other countries this symbol is associated with different animals or objects. Here is a far from complete list:
Bulgaria - klomba or maimunsko a ("monkey A"),
Netherlands - apenstaartje ("monkey's tail"),
Israel - "Strudel"
Spain - like the measure of weight "arroba",
France - the same measure of weight "arrobase",
Germany, Poland - monkey tail, monkey ear, paper clip, monkey,
Italy - "chiocciola" - snail,
Denmark, Norway, Sweden - "snabel-a" - "snout a" or elephant trunk,
Czech Republic, Slovakia - rollmops (marinated herring),
America, Finland - cat,
China, Taiwan - mouse,
Turkey - rose,
Serbia - "crazy A"
Vietnam - "twisted A",
Ukraine - “ravlik” (snail), “doggie” or, again, “dog”.
In the international language of Esperanto around the world, regardless of the countries behind the @ symbol, the name "heliko", which in Esperanto means "snail", has been established.
The fact of its worldwide recognition was the introduction in February 2004 by the International Telecommunication Union in Morse code of the code for the symbol @ ( - - - ), for the convenience of transferring e-mail addresses. The code combines the Latin letters A and C and reflects their joint graphic writing.
Where the symbol came from is not known for certain. It has existed since at least the 15th century, and possibly even earlier. According to Professor Giorgio Stabile's hypothesis, a 16th-century document written by a Florentine merchant mentioned "the price of one A of wine" (possibly amphoras). At the same time, the letter A, according to the then tradition, was decorated with a curl and looked like @. From this we can assume that the symbol came from the word "amphora".
According to the American scientist Berthold Ullman, the @ sign was invented by medieval monks to shorten the Latin word "ad", which was often used as a universal word meaning "on", "in", "in relation to", etc.
In Spanish, Portuguese, French, the name of the symbol comes from the word "arroba" - an old Spanish measure of weight, approx. 15 kg., which was abbreviated on the letter with the @ sign.
The modern official name for the symbol "commercial at" comes from commercial calculations, for example, 7 widgets @ $2 each = $14, which translates to 7 widgets. 2$ = 14$. Since this symbol was used in trade, it was placed on the keyboards of the first typewriters and from there migrated to the computer keyboard.
The dog came to the Internet thanks to the creator of e-mail, Tomlinson. He chose it as a character on the keyboard that could not be found in any name and cause confusion, as a separator for the username and email server. The first network address was [email protected] in the Arpanet network.
Why is this symbol called “dog” in Russia? There are several versions of the origin of this funny name.
According to one, the icon really looks like a curled up dog. On the other hand, the abrupt sound of the English “at” is a bit like a dog barking. Still others manage to consider almost all the letters included in the word “dog” in the inscriptions of the symbol, well, perhaps, with the exception of “k”.
The most common version sees the origin of this name in one of the very first computer games "Adventure" ("Adventure"). Back then, the displays were purely text-based, and the story of the game had to travel through a text labyrinth. One of the characters in this game was a dog, which was denoted by the @ symbol. Whether the name came from this game, or whether the symbol was chosen because of its name, is now very difficult to find out. Maybe you know for sure?
Everyone who uses e-mail knows for sure that the name of any mailbox contains an incomprehensible at first glance either a letter, or an icon, or a symbol that looks like @. Some Internet fans call this icon the main pop symbol of popularity. And if you could hear about this, then not everyone knows that in 2004 the International Telecommunication Union introduced the “dog” into Morse code.
History of the @ sign
Strange as it may sound, but an Italian researcher named Giorgio Stabile, studying the archives of the Institute of Economic History in the city of Prato near Florence, discovered a very strange phenomenon. It turns out that the “dog” familiar to us is first found in written documents that date back to 1563. The document talked about the fact that 3 merchant ships arrived in Spain, and as cargo on board there were containers with wine, which were indicated by the @ symbol.
After a little thought and analysis of the then market, the scientist came to the conclusion that the @ sign in those days denoted such a unit of wine measurement as an amphora or "anfora". It was a universal measuring unit for measuring volume.
However, there is a second version of the appearance of this strange sign. Now a US scholar named Berthold Ullman has suggested that the @ sign was invented by medieval monks, who used it to shorten the word "ad", which was also universal and had several meanings: "on", "in", "in relation to" and some others.
However, the true origin of this actually mysterious symbol is still unknown.
commercial at
In the modern world, the @ symbol is officially called “commercial at” and it originates from business. For example, it could be found in such an inscription as “7 widgets @ $2 each = $14”, which in translation would sound like “7 pieces of 2 dollars = 14 dollars”.
And since it was difficult to make any calculations without this symbol, the first Underwood typewriter in history, which was released in 1885, already had this symbol.
Later it was inherited by the computer keyboard. But what is noteworthy, in the USSR, the @ symbol was not known to anyone until the first computers appeared here.
But how did this strange symbol appear in the names of our mailboxes? For this we must thank the computer scientist Ray Tomlinson, who in 1971 sent the world's first e-mail. In this case, the address consisted of 2 halves.
The first is the username, the second is the name of the computer on which the user is logged on. And to separate one from the other, Ray Tomlinson chose an icon on the keyboard that was not in either of the two halves. And by chance it was the @ symbol.
How the commercial at (@) got the name "dog"
In fact, they have not yet come to a consensus here either, and today there are several versions of why the @ symbol began to be called “dog”.
1. Verviya the first: The icon looks like a dog curled up.
2. Version two: if you pronounce the English word at several times in a row, it will be like a dog barking.
3. Version three: if you have imagination, then in this symbol you can find all the letters that are in the word "dog". Well, if only with the exception of the letter "k".
But for big romantics, there is another version, which most users adhere to. In the old days, there was a fairly popular game "Adventure", which translates as "Adventure".
The player had to wander through the labyrinth, look for treasures and fight against a variety of enemies. The labyrinth on the screen was drawn with symbols, the enemies were indicated by letters and icons, but the treasure hunter's faithful dog was indicated by the @ sign.
However, history is silent about whether the badge for the dog was not chosen because it was already called that.
Where else is the @ symbol used?
1. In chemistry, when writing formulas - [email protected]
2. In Europe, there is even such a sign "@", which means that this place has free access to the Internet.
3. Sometimes it is used to replace the anarchy symbol, since it is simply impossible to write this sign on a computer.
4. In some European languages it is used in informal correspondence.
5. The international student organization AIESEC uses this sign in informal correspondence as a symbol of the organization.
This is our "dog". At first glance, a simple icon, but in fact, there is a whole story behind it!
Monuments to the "electronic dog"
Today in Russia there are 2 monuments to the electronic dog. The first of them is installed in Chita, the second in Orenburg. They also wanted to erect a monument to the “dog” in the Moscow region, but so far this remains in the plans.
Monument in Chita- This is a cement slab, the size of which is 1.5 by 1.5 meters. The plate is installed directly on the sidewalk and took the place of 9 ceramic tiles that were in this place. The monument was erected in just half a day. It took 40 kg of cement. Residents of the city are proud that the first monument to the @ symbol in Russia appeared in their city.
And this year another one was opened and this event happened in Orenburg on the territory of Perovsky Park. This is a large amusement park that young people like to visit, and besides, there is free Internet, so the choice of the place was not accidental.
"Electronic Dog" is not just a button on the keyboard. This is a symbol that has its own history, and as it turned out, this history is long and interesting.
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