Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/10/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> Brian....is it true that you are responsible for > the "@" symbol in Internet email addresses? It's fuzzy and complicated. The choice of the "@" sign was made by several people at about the same time. I generally credit Charlotte Mooers with being the first. She generally credits John Vittal, as does John. I probably got the idea from Phil Karlton, who was killed in a car crash in Italy a few years ago without ever revealing who he would credit. Until the middle 1970s it was customary to write email addresses as mooers at bbn rather than mooers@bbn or (much later) mooers@bbn.arpa then even later mooers@bbn.com I was certainly pretty forceful in my push to get "@" used in place of "space-at-space", but I don't think it's fair to say that I invented it or selected it. I will absolutely take credit for having provided rational justification for it (it could be typed on every keyboard of that era without using the SHIFT key, and it had no other meaning at the time). Other people who contributed to this include Austin Henderson, Ken Pogran, Ed Taft, Diana Bajzek, Martin Frost, and probably many others that I don't remember. Here is a copy-and-paste quotation from the first written standard for email: We suggest that the text of network mail, whether transmitted over the FTP telnet connection (via the MAIL command) or over a separate data connection (with the MLFL command), be governed by the syntax below: Example: From: White at SRI-ARC Date: 24 JUL 1973 1527-PDT Subject: Multi-Site Journal Meeting Announcement NIC: 17996 At 10 AM Wednesday 25-JULY there will be a meeting to discuss a Multi-Site Journal in the context of the Utility. Y'all be here. - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html