On the Internet, @ (pronounced "at" or "at
sign" or "address sign") is the symbol in an e-mail address
that separates the name of the user from the user's Internet address,
as in this hypothetical e-mail address example: msmuffet@tuffet.org.
In business, @ is a symbol meaning "at" or "each."
For example, it means "each" in "4 apples @ $.35 = $1.40."
Perhaps because it was one of the standard characters designed into typewriters
(usually with the upper shift key pressed), the @ was chosen for inclusion
as one of the special characters in the ASCII set of characters that became
standard for computer keyboards, programs, and online message transmission.
In July, 1972, as the specifications for the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
were being written, someone suggested including some e-mail programs written
by Ray Tomlinson, an engineer at Bolt Beranek and Newman, chief contractor
on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the precursor
of the Internet. In their book, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, Katie Hafner
and Matthew Lyon describe how the @ sign got there:
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