It took me a couple of days of catching up to come across a sad story, especially for his family and friends. Ray Tomlinson who is/was (foreshadowing?) credited with inventing electronic mail and popularizing the use of the @ symbol, passed away over the weekend.
Had David Von Dusenheimer* of East Squeegum, Texas, the creator of the hashtag died, we might have seen headlines such as #sh*t! (*not his real name, nor real city or state). I confess to having given ZERO thought to how the @ came to be until reading his obituary, but Mr. Tomlinson’s logic and explanation both resonate with me.
It’s actually a very sweet story about something that’s very much a part of the scenery of our machinery. And I love that possibly his use of the symbol @ saved it from disappearing. I was doing something the other day (happens so rarely you’d think I might remember what that something was but you would be in error) and typed the symbol for dollars, $, and realized that the symbol for cents is gone (probably not totally gone but requires a shift-alt-control-blind stab keyboard maneuver that entails having seven fingers on three of the five hands you need).
Cynics have suggested that symbol’s absence from my keyboard may be why so little of what I type seems to make sense. My response is such small minds should take a flying leap@a rolling donut. With sprinkles. Or worse.
-bill kenny
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