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Short Stuff: The @ Symbol · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Go go go, let's go. This is Josh. That's man.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I just did it again. Do you want to start over? Sure? Hey,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: There's Chuck. I did it again. Hey and welcome to
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Let's get started perfect.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: No one will ever know, so. Uh. This is put
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: together by our buddy Dave Rouse for how stuff works
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: dot com. And this is a great one about the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: at symbol and I love this stuff. This is These
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: are the ones that are those uh nice little dinner
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: party nuggets that you can whip out in right when
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you can eat dinner with humans. Again, that's not that's
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: not obnoxious. It's not one of those that makes people
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: roll their eyes. It's a little one where people go, oh,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: that's a really cool little nugget. Thank you for that.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Give me an example of an obnoxious one. I know
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: what you mean, but like, what is it? What it
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: could be an example? Because I know what you mean,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: but I can't put my finger on it. Do we
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: have time? I know this is a short I don't.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: I can't think of a specific example, but it's also
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: in the delivery too, and the one uh, the one
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: way you're guaranteed to be obnoxious, as if someone says
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: something kind of cool and you go, well, actually, and
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: then say anything else. There's a life lesson from Chuck
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: right there. Never say well actually to any human so, um,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that's true, or push your glasses up while you're saying that,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: right right, that's another two word combination that's awful, like
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: canal well actually, well, actually, what we're talking about is
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: the at symbol. And in America we have the most
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: boring name for a symbol that's basically everywhere in the
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: world that has a better name for it than in America,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: we just call it the symbol. It's really functional and functionary,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I think. So let's let's go around the world, Yeah
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: we Chuck. Let's start off in Germany. Yes, if you
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: go to Germany, you would call it the Klamarafa spider monkey. Sure, well,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: you have to say spider monkey in a German accent too,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: spider monkey. Uh. In Israel it's called a struddale because
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: it does kind of look like a struddle a little bit.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Um what about in Hungary. Well, in Hungary, you're gonna
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: go with a ku kak, I don't know if it's
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a kuka. Let's go with that, it's a worm. It
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: sounds way more Hungarian. What about in in Norway? Norway
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: it's a pigstail, which is a grizz hole. Yes, and
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: then it's a ghoul or rose in Turkey. So everywhere,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and in Spain it's called an a roba. And the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: reason that Spain is worth calling out, it's actually in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: the title of this house stuff Works article from ruse Um,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: is because they think that aroba is actually the oldest
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: name for that symbol that we call the at symbol
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: in the entire world. That's right. Uh, if you go
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to Spain or any kind of Spanish speaking country now
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and you go to a market, let's say, you will
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: see the sign called the aeroba, and it is depending
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: on where you are, what Spanish speaking country you're in,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: um it is. It's a quantity. So if you go
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to Bolivia, let's say, and you want potatoes, you could
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: get one aeroba of potatoes it's about a bushel, or
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: an aroba of oil is about three gallons. Okay, So
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: now that you know that you can translate in aroba
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: into absolutely anything you find in the market, right, I
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: guess no. No, the answer is no, because, for some
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: weird reason, in aroba of oil is about three gallons
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: or some at each point three leaders, and aroba wine
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: is over four gallons. It's fifteen point one. This makes
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: zero sense at all. Yeah, I think you just have
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: to know what product you're getting what an aeroba is
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: equivalent to. Yes, you do. And that's weird because measurements
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: are meant to standardize things, and you standardized liquid or
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: you standardized mass. But the Spanish said, no, we're not
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: doing that. We're going our own way. Um, why don't
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: you just have some of our delightful topics and stop complaining?
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: That's right? But Rus do then and got his hands
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: on a book from Keith Houston or Houston Shady Characters
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  Speaker 1: colon the Secret Life of punctuation symbols and other type
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  Speaker 1: of graphical marks, And in that is a two part
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: history of the AT symbol, where Mr Houston or Houston,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure which one it is. I'm going to Houston.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I think George is the only place in the world
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: that pronounces at Houston. Oh wait, no, that's what they
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: call that street in New York too, don't they. Yeah,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: you said Houston Street in New York, They're like, get
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a rope. Hey, is that at the corner of Houston
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and Avenue of the America's You know, I was referencing
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: the famous Pace Picante commercial. Oh yeah, New York City,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: get a rope. So anyway, Greeks and Romans, Mr. Houston
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: points out, were the first people that were trading these
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: commodities uh in markets and using something called uh m
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: for a as the measurement. It was the ceramic sort
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: of long necked ceramic jar. Yeah, with the two handles
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  Speaker 1: called an M sorry M for a. Yeah, that's plural, right,
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  Speaker 1: and I was about seven gallons. So that was Greece
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and Rome. Then the Spanish and Portuguese picked it up
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: for their commodities, but they called it the aroba. They did,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: but not at first. Apparently a roba comes from um
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the Arabic for al rub, which means one fourth or
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: a quarter, and the ancient Portuguese and Spanish traders worked
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: pretty closely with some of the Moors who lived in
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: the area as well, and actually ran the place for
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: about seven hundred years or more, get it or more,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and so that the that Arabic rubbed off al rub
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: rubbed off onto the Spanish and Portuguese. I don't know
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: where all this word play is coming from. It's making
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: me panic a little bit. But the point is is
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  Speaker 1: in aroba did not necessarily stand in for amphora. It
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: meant a quarter of something, or about twenty five pounds,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and then eventually it's somehow made the switch over to
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: be the same thing as an amphora, which again is
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that vessel that's used for storage but also a unit
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: of measurement, usually a liquid measurement. And some researcher figured
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: out that somewhere between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and flora and arooba became synonymous with one another. That's right,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna take a little break and we'll tell
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: you what all of this has to do with the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: AT symbol right after this. Well, now we're on the road,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: two from Josh man Chuck. It's stuff you should know,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: all right, alrighty, So we've been talking a lot about
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: these words that are units of measurement, But what has
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: this all got to do with the AT sign, what
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: we call the AT sign uh. An Italian historian found
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: this out in two thousand, a man named Giorgio Stabile.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: He's a professor of history in science or history of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: science at La Sapiens University in Rome, and he found
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a letter from fifty six that showed the AT symbol
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: as used as a shorthand for amphora. Yeah, the guy
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: there it is the first one. Yeah, the the guy
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: who wrote the wrote the letter back in six, Francesco Loppy.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: He was describing an amphora of wine, but rather than
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: use the word amphora, he used the AT symbol. And
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: it's like you're saying, as far as anybody can tell,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: that's it. That's the first use of that ever. And
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: then the fact that um in Spain that this was
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: the same thing as amphora. It shows that since we
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: know that amphora and uh aroba or became interchangeable, then
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: that we know that Aroba is the oldest known descriptor
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of what we call the AT symbol here in the States,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: that's right. And then here in the States, and we're
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: getting to how it became like twitter handle. Yeah, just wait, everybody,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: we'll get to it in part three of this episode.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: This is sort of a long one for a shorty,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: but that's right. Um. Here in the States, it became
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: known as just shorthand for at the rate of something.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So if you were, uh, if you worked at a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: warehouse or whatever, and you're filling out your order form,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you would say, I need a hundred tons of of
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: whatever at this price per ton, and you would use
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that little AT symbol and they'll say, nice, try, We'll
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: be telling you what price you're going to be paying. Uh.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And that's sort of the way it was used in
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: America and our commerce. It was just like, this is
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: at the rate of this, and that's what this little
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: symbol means. And um, I mean that's basically what it's
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: always meant in English, at least or in the United States. UM.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: And it still is use that, yeah, for sure, for sure. UM.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: We never used it to equate amphora or any kind
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: of unit of measurement. It was just like you said,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: at the rate of um. But we typically tend to
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: think of the AT symbol as a a keyboard key.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: But it didn't make it onto keyboards as at least
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: in the form of typewriters until I think the brown
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the turn of the nineteenth century, and typewriters have been
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: around for a while before them, but they were not
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: like the kind of keyboards that we understand now. They
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: only had the letters are the numbers two through nine
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: on them, all the letters of the alphabet, so they
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: didn't have any room for any kind of fancy AT
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: symbol or anything like that. Yeah, the the dollar sign
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: and the AT symbol came about, like you said, the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century, and then in the nineteen fifties,
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: the AT sign was made or I was added to
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the binary code decimal interchange code, the b C D
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I C, which were these forty eight characters that were
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: printed on those punch cards, those early computer punch cards. Yeah,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: they used their word code twice in that I know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: binary coded decimal interchange code. So um so kind of
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: made it's on trade into computing all the way back
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: in the fifties, and then by nine sixty one IBM
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: used it in its programming code. Uh, and it's one
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of its early supercomputers, the Stretch. UM. So from that
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: moment on, the AS sign has always kind of been
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: there hanging around, but it wasn't until ninety one when
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a guy named Ray Tomlinson, who was working UM with
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the Advanced Research Project Agencies, first stab at what would
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: become the Internet arponnet. That it became um the symbol
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that we know and love today, which is the thing
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the fulcrum that an email address moves up and down on.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I'd love that word up and down on
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: on fulcrum. Fulcrum is pretty great, so great. So his
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: job there was to write programs that we're going to
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: run on this arponnet network. And he was connecting nineteen
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: computers in nineteen seventy one, and the electron mail at
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the time was basically it was very cute. It was
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: basically a message that you could save on a computer
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: and then opened later by a different person, but on
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: that same computer, no one was sending anything at the time.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: It was like a digital post it basically, yeah, exactly.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: It would have probably been more efficient to just leave
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: a post it was, but they were trying to electrify
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: or I guess digitize everything, right, it's electrifying. So he said,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: you know what, what would be really cool is if
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: I could take this little digital post it note and
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: actually send it across the room to that computer that
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: I'm connected to. How can I do this? So, yeah,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: he figured out that there was a I don't know
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: if an easy way to do it is the right
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: way to put it. But one of the things that
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: he had to to establish was how to identify one
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: computer from another as far as you know, the protocol
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: was concerned. And so he came up with email addresses
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: basically what we would call email addresses today. Um. And
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: that he inserted the AT symbol basically for a couple
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: of reasons. One, it already made sense as AT because
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: it was at the rate of so AT's right there
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: in the in the thing the symbol stands for. It's
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: not like some big stretch of the imagination when you
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: see that. Yeah, he just meant that this computer to
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: go to that one at at that one over there,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: or this user at this computer or something like that.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: And so Um. The other thing was that it hadn't
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: really been used in any of the coding language that
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: ARPA net was was based on, So it was kind
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: of like a free symbol just hanging out there. And
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: that's how AT got drafted into becoming one of the
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: most most used symbols in computer programming today. Yeah, he
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: sent that very first test message to um what we
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: think is the very first email address Tomlinson at BBN
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: dash uh ten exa full stop. Right, you're waiting for
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: dot something but dot EU. Yeah, they didn't need it
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: at the time. I guess, so that's I mean, that's
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: how they add symbol became so great, so so great.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Love it, uh and I guess since Chuck said love it,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that's it for short Stuff, which means short Stuff is out.
• 14:21
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