origin of the "at" symbol?

[sixf00t4]

when did the @ symbol start being used? is there another, or technical name for it? like the octothorpe (#)

just curious.

[Target]

No idea when/where it started being used... believe its called an ampersand though.

<Target searches frantically for the thought process that led to the above mistaken symbol identification in order to correct them> See, thats what you get for casually reading a post and then responding - DOH! Thanks for the correction fellas....

[lost-and-found]

the ampersand is the & symbol

[f1oored]

I did some research here and found nothing. Well almost nothing. I did find out that this is the symbol for an aborted fetus of unknown sex.

[OuTpaTienT]

http://home.t-online.de/home/Hanno_Kuehnert/atengli.htm

[f1oored]

I also found out the the peace sign is also the anti-nuclear sign.

[OuTpaTienT]

A Natural History of the @ Sign: Part One

LINGUIST List 7.968: The @ symbol

Character design standards - Punctuation 1

Where it's @, by Karl-Erik Tallmo

[f1oored]

OuT - what did you do a search for to find all of those sites??? Or did you just have them saved in your favorites?

[OuTpaTienT]

First I searched for: "the @ symbol"
But didn't make much headway. I did find that same Symbol page that you did...and actually spent a bit of time trying to find the "at" symbol in it. It's not there! lol.

Then I searched for "at sign" @

one of the first links was the one I posted first. That page had a "links" link. That lead me to here:
http://www.myfonts.com/Character0040.html

And that page has the 4 or 5 links that I posted next.

[sixf00t4]

you rock out. but, hey, you know that already.