Shift. Then the number 2. It’s a keyboard combination that we all type with some frequency. And it’s also one that most of us used very little until the last two decades; before email, we just didn’t pay all that much attention to @. So we wondered (don’t we always?) why that little A in the circle became such a keyboard heavy hitter. Why not a dash? Or an exclamation point?
It turns out that the @ was chosen precisely because it was rather uncommon. It wasn’t used by most people all that often, yet it was still a standard key on all keyboards.
And while we’re, well, @ it: on May 24, 2004, the 160th anniversary of the Morse Code, a brand new symbol was introduced. It was the first introduction of a new code character since World War I and it consisted of a very exciting dot-dash-dash-dot-dash-dot. And with that, it became possible to transmit an email address via Morse Code.
Speaking of email, we’d like to remind you that we won’t ever sell or give away your email address (or any other contact information you choose to share with us). We only use the email address that you give us to send you a reminder when your ads are expiring. We’re also happy to share our email addresses with you if you’d like to send us photos or other information via email. In fact, here’s mine: jenk@blog.findnflip.com. Feel free to hit me up with questions, suggestions or even complaints. Just, please, no Morse Code.