Where'd This Come From?

The ‘@’ character, the symbol of the internet age, was once an obscure symbol known only to book-keepers. Ray Tomlinson, who died this week, the man widely regarded as the inventor of the email, plucked it from his keyboard in 1971 to go between the user name and destination address.  He chose @ because it was then rarely used in computing and the English name of the symbol was already "at". Businesses used it to indicate unit price eg 12 batteries @ $1 each. Early uses of the symbol can be dated to the 1300’s.