Inadvertant Great Idea

The "@" symbol was included on the typewriter in 1885, and remained the least used key on the board until 1971, when Ray Tomlinson used it as the natural divider in a new technology known as "email."

It is now widely used in email, text messaging, computer programming languages, and even modern genetics. None of these were anything close to what the original intended use was, which was for merchants to price items: "3 bananas @ 5 cents."


_