After I posted The Octothorpe, part 2 of 2 last weekend, New Scientist magazine’s online editor Sumit Paul-Choudhury got in touch to say:
I was surprised and delighted to discover that you had cited us in part 1 of your piece on the octothorpe (via the OED) and thought you might be interested in reading the original reference, which I have now liberated from our paywall[.]
Bell Telephone Laboratories, one-time research subsidiary of American telecoms giant AT&T, has produced some of the 20th century’s most influential developments in the worlds of science and technology. It boasts seven Nobel Prizes in Physics awarded for, among other things, a demonstration of the wave nature of matter, the invention of the transistor and the discovery of background cosmic radiation. Other notable products of this storied research centre include the laser, radio astronomy, the first communications satellite and the UNIX operating system, which forms a key component of the internet and of modern computing in general.1
The ‘#’ symbol is something of a problem child. It seems at first to be quite innocuous, a jack-of-all-trades whose names and uses correspond in a pleasingly systematic manner: ‘#5’ is read ‘number five’, leading to the name ‘number sign’; in North America, ‘5#’ means ‘five pounds in weight’, giving ‘pound sign’, while the cross-hatching suggested by its shape leads to the commonly used British name of ‘hash sign’.1
Shady Characters readers have again provided some great extra detail on the marks discussed here. Penny Speckter comments on The Interrobang, part 2 with some heartening information regarding the interrobang’s official status:
While the interrobang has evoked both enthusiasm and derision, and may, like Esperanto, become a blip in history, still, it has evoked thousands of words of interesting comment. And it has finally been awarded an official status in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, published in 1996 under the definition “punctuation,” where it is listed alphabetically along with other recognized marks.
The interrobang’s arrival on the keyboard of Remington Rand’s Model 25 typewriter brought with it a new wave of interest in the character. In common with its appearance in Richard Isbell’s Americana,1 the mark’s transition from hot metal type to the typewriter keyboard was the result of a happy coincidence: a Remington Rand graphic designer saw ATF’s sample brochure for the font2 and lobbied in turn for its provision on his company’s typewriters. The Model 25’s replaceable key and typehead3 allowed different characters to be installed as required, providing the perfect vehicle for promoting this as-yet unproven mark of punctuation. Remington Rand entertained ideas of effecting a revolution in punctuation with its new interrobang key, and said as much in an internal newsletter: