Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...
I've just been listening to a podcast about the # octothorpe / pound sign / hash / chess checkmate symbol / Swedish cartography symbol for a lumber yard:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/
And yeah, it has the same Latin root as Pound before its meaning bifurcated. We Brits call it hash, US the pound sign. It survived into the computer age because it was found on typewriters.
When touch tone phones were developed by Bell Labs, they realised that a couple of symbols in addition to 0 - 9 would be useful, and their management wanted new, abstract symbols. However the case was made that touch tone phones might interact with computerised menu systems, so symbols already found on keyboards would be better. It is from then that the term Octothorpe was coined by engineers because that's how their sense of humour works.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
