ABOUT THE HISTORY.Merchant &Tech meaning…….

The ubiquitous symbol of internet era communications, the @ sign used in email addresses, is actually a 500 year old invention of Italian merchants. ……. known example of the symbol's use, as an indication of a measure of weight or volume. the @ sign represented an amphora, a measure of capacity based on the terracotta jars used to transport grain and liquid in the ancient Mediterranean world.

The first known instance of its use, occurred in a letter written by a Florentine Merchant on May 4, 1536. Sent from Seville to Rome by a trader called Francesco Lapi, the document describes the arrival in Spain of three ships bearing treasure from Latin America.

"There, an amphora of wine, which is one thirtieth of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats," Mr Lapi informs his correspondent, representing the amphora with the now familiar symbol of an "a" wrapped in its own tail. The Spanish word for the @ sign, arroba , also indicates a weight or measure, which was equivalent, at the end of the 16th century, to 11.3kg (25 lb) or 22.7 litres (six gallons).

"Until now no one knew that the @ sign derived from this symbol, which was developed by Italian traders in a mercantile script they created between the middle ages and the renaissance," An Italian professor Mr. Stabile said. "The loop around the 'a' is typical of that merchant script." ……

He said the sign, known to modern Italian cybernauts as la chiocciola (the snail), had made its way along trade routes to northern Europe where it took on its contemporary accountancy meaning: "at the price of".Having hopped on to English typewriter keyboards in the early 20th century, it was selected as a rarely used symbol to separate user names from domain addresses by the American internet engineer Ray Tomlinson.So, it becomes the symbol of the key Technology inventions in 20th century.

The inventors of the "snail" would doubtless be proud to learn that they were the progenitors of such a successful sign, also known, somewhat unromantically in English, as "commercial at".

"No symbol is born of chance. This one has represented the entire history of navigation on the oceans and has now come to typify travel in cyberspace," Prof Stabile said.