From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: the term "pound sign" (was: help: character to integer)
Date: 1996/10/09
Message-ID: <dewar.844907172@merv>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 189126737
references: <52t8la$2l8@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <3252BEC8.529E@lmco.com>
 <dewar.844516356@schonberg> <53blbk$6va@krusty.irvine.com>
 <53gged$oqi@felix.seas.gwu.edu>
organization: New York University
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-10-09T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Mike said

"Way back in my high school and undergraduate days (hmmm - 1958-66),
we routinely used # in physics classes to represent pounds. That was
definitely before ASCII.

Mike Feldman
(gray and aging pedant)"


This is not decisive, Mike is too young for childhood memories to be
early enough :-)

Telegraphy codes which were the precursors to ASCII were certainly in
wide use in 1958.

I must say I suspect that the guess that the # abbreviation for pound
is older and ISO/ASCII copied this to decide where the stirling sigh
went seems plausible, but we have no proof ye!