It was mistakenly called “pound sign” because on British keyboards that is where the “L” thingie was.
Why would a £ sign be on a phone?
No, it’s called a pound sign because the symbol has been commonly used for a century to represent dry weight in pounds on container labels, especially agricultural containers.
Back to school with you, grumpy.
I always called it a sharp sign.
It’s the number sign…
You’re all wrong. It’s an octothorp.
Wiki on octothorpe: “Origin disputed. Reportedly a jocular coinage by Bell Labs supervisor Don Macpherson in the early 1960s, from octo- (“eight”), with reference to its eight points, + -thorpe (after 1912 Olympic medalist Jim Thorpe, in whom Macpherson was interested). However, Doug Kerr [1] attributes octatherp to a practical joke by engineers John C. Schaak, Herbert T. Uthlaut, and Lauren Asplund upon himself and Howard Eby.
The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (1991) supports octotherp as the original spelling, and telephone engineers as the source.”
So, I suppose, if you are talking about the # sign, before around 1960 it might have been any of several names, but definitely not an octothorpe. After the 1960s it may only be called an octothorpe.
“FIG. 1 shows a pushbutton pad 1 … The pad 1 provides keys for numerals 0 to 9, while the sextile or asterisk (*) key is decoded to provide a decimal point and the octothorp (.music-sharp.) key generates a command to send the contents of the memory unto the telephone line through a send circuit 7, a coupling circuit 8 and the hybrid network 2.”
Cool! So, from the date on the patent, if it is on a phone after 1975 (or is it 1973, the date of the filing?), it is an octothorp. You have shown me that context is the key. On a phone it’s an octothorp, on a music staff it’s a sharp, and so forth.
Register with Wiki and update the article and include the patent link as a reference. It’ll make that article more complete.
Back then and even now it is the “pound” sign.
Sorry, it’s always been called an “octothorpe”.
It was mistakenly called “pound sign” because on British keyboards that is where the “L” thingie was.
Why would a £ sign be on a phone?
No, it’s called a pound sign because the symbol has been commonly used for a century to represent dry weight in pounds on container labels, especially agricultural containers.
Back to school with you, grumpy.
I always called it a sharp sign.
It’s the number sign…
You’re all wrong. It’s an octothorp.
Wiki on octothorpe: “Origin disputed. Reportedly a jocular coinage by Bell Labs supervisor Don Macpherson in the early 1960s, from octo- (“eight”), with reference to its eight points, + -thorpe (after 1912 Olympic medalist Jim Thorpe, in whom Macpherson was interested). However, Doug Kerr [1] attributes octatherp to a practical joke by engineers John C. Schaak, Herbert T. Uthlaut, and Lauren Asplund upon himself and Howard Eby.
The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (1991) supports octotherp as the original spelling, and telephone engineers as the source.”
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octothorpe
So, I suppose, if you are talking about the # sign, before around 1960 it might have been any of several names, but definitely not an octothorpe. After the 1960s it may only be called an octothorpe.
It’s on a phone. It’s an octothorp.
US Patent 3920926, filed Dec. 1973:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/3920926
“FIG. 1 shows a pushbutton pad 1 … The pad 1 provides keys for numerals 0 to 9, while the sextile or asterisk (*) key is decoded to provide a decimal point and the octothorp (.music-sharp.) key generates a command to send the contents of the memory unto the telephone line through a send circuit 7, a coupling circuit 8 and the hybrid network 2.”
Cool! So, from the date on the patent, if it is on a phone after 1975 (or is it 1973, the date of the filing?), it is an octothorp. You have shown me that context is the key. On a phone it’s an octothorp, on a music staff it’s a sharp, and so forth.
Register with Wiki and update the article and include the patent link as a reference. It’ll make that article more complete.
I got to learn something today. Life is good.