We all use the @ symbol multiple times a day, but where does it come from? It is actually older than you think.
The modern dat application comes from a man called Raymond Samuel Tomlinson. He was an American computer programmer who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971;[ It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the user name from the name of their machine, an application which has been used in email addresses ever since.
However, that is not where the @ symbol started. It was once a rarely used key on the typewriter. Although not included on the keyboard of the earliest commercially successful typewriters, it was on at least one 1889 model and the very successful Underwood models from the Underwood No. 5 in 1900 onward. The Dutch call it monkey’s tail, and the Italians call it snail—so where did it all begin?
The earliest yet discovered symbol in this shape is found in a Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle written by Constantinos Manasses in 1345. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ symbol in place of the capital letter alpha “Α” as an initial in the word Amen; however, the reason behind it being used in this context is still unknown. The evolution of the symbol used today is not recorded.
The first known use of the symbol in its traditional commercial sense is in a 1536 Spanish-language letter from a Florentine merchant. It stood for a unit of volume, arroba (quadrantal; from Arabic al-rubʿ, one-fourth), which represented the capacity of a standard amphora, a vessel used to store and transport liquids, cereals, and other goods. This use of this symbol was so widespread in the Mediterranean trade that it is still called arroba in Spanish and Portuguese today.
In 2012, the @ was registered as a trademark with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. A cancellation request was filed in 2013, and the cancellation was ultimately confirmed by the German Federal Patent Court in 2017.
So the next you send an email or use the @ for any social media platforms, realize you are dealing with a historical symbol.
sources
History of Sorts 
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