Where = (equals) Comes From
Marc Dominus over at The Universe of Discourse has done some research into the history of the equal sign. Part of the reason a pair of parallel lines was chosen was "because no 2 things can be more equal." The entry also mentions the origin of a two other diacritical marks, ˜ (tilde) and ¨ (umlaut), which evolved from the letters "n" and "e", respectively. Very fascinating stuff.
I only stumbled across this entry a few minutes ago, but the rest of his blog looks equally interesting as well.
Technorati Tags: math, equals, letters, history, etymology, characters, Universe of Discourse
