What’s the story behind the invention of the “@” character, and what was it used for before e-mail was invented?
Invented by a grocer in Peoria, Wisconsin, the ampersand allowed him to list prices as “Bannanas 5@ .50” instead of “You bought five bannanas at fifty cents each.”
Where is Peoria, anyway?
I won’t dispute any of your story except this part. @ is not the ampersand. The ampersand is &.
Also, what’s a bannana?
Hey, no fair.
I asked first, “Where is Peoria?”
Awright, dammit, it’s an “at sign”, “at mark” or “commercial A”.
http://www.hut.fi/~dzhao/glossarysign.html
Now, where the hell is Peoria?
Well, you said it was in Wisconsin…
It’s actually in Mississippi, Colorado, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Oregon, New York, and Illinois.
That’s a hell of a town.
And you believe everything you read in the web?
Thanks, Finch, Nice to know that some posters are helpful here.
:rolleyes:
What, I’m not helpful? There is, indeed, a city called Peoria in each and every one of the states I listed.
However, most people mean the one in Illinois.
Peoria is in fact located in Wisconsin.
:DBut only if you’re reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally drunk!
So, what about the bannana?
Try here. It’s more a search for the name of the sign than a true history, but what it does have is interesting and relevant, much unlike the previous posts.
Was this the shortest, coolest thread title ever?
I guessed exactly what the thread was about just from that one keystroke.
Congrats to Supersaurus on a sterling effort to cut down on the bandwidth-clutter on today’s crowded internet!
Two key strokes. He held down the bananna. Er, Shift key.
…unless the OP is using some foreign keyboard. The @ symbol is a single keystroke on Japanese keyboards, right next to the P.
Well, dang!
Getting back to the OP, I should point out that some applications in the pre-Internet days made special use of the @ key. Lotus 1-2-3, for example, used the @ symbol for functions such as @SUM(A1…A10), whereas Excel uses the notation =SUM(A1:A10). I don’t know if more recent versions of Lotus still use this convention or not.
As noted above, PEORIA is in Mississippi, Colorado, Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Texas, Iowa, Oregon, New York, and Illinois.
As to the other question, BANNANA is in Hawaii: