Understanding the power symbol and other popular technology symbols

I’m sure you’ve witnessed this scenario before.

Your mom or dad grabs the remote control of your house TV with one hand and starts to look at it carefully. After an almost infinite period of time, they decide to repeatedly press one of its buttons in a more or less random attempt to increase the volume, to change the channel or to turn off the TV set.

Anything can be expected from the results of this type of operation. I mean, anything.

In order to facilitate this type of difficult task, the human being has been helping himself for a long time with all kinds of signs and symbols that briefly represent major concepts. But where do these come from? for example, where does a symbol as common as the on/off symbol come from which can be found in all kinds of devices?

As on so many other occasions, the Pandora RC blog is here to rescue you from the origins of some of the most popular technological symbols (bear this in mind because this knowledge is a great resource for meetings, celebrations and even top-level technological events).

1. The power symbol

It’ s one of the main elements of this signs and symbols party. If you don’t know what this means, it’s probably because you’ve been living in a cave for 60 years or you’ ve just woken up from a cryogenic Captain America dream.

The on/off icon (or power symbol) has been pressed on buttons over four million times by humans of all kinds for decades. The one thing you probably don’t know is its origin. It was created in the Second World War by engineers who were inspired by the binary system (ones and zeros) to combine this symbol, which alternated between 1 (or on, with power) and 0 (off, without power). A great deal of wit for one of the most successful symbols in history.

2. The USB icon

It is also very present in our devices and, of course, in our USB devices. The symbol has its origin in a modified Neptune Trident at each of its ends, which instead of ending in arrowheads like the “original” one, end in a circle, a triangle and a square, in order to represent the versatility of the standard when connecting peripherals. Undoubtedly, a very conceptual symbol.

3. The Bluetooth symbol

It is very popular and has an equal historical origin. This symbol, which we find, among other places, on the screen of our mobile phones, finds its genesis in the Danish king Harald Blatand, who was said to eat cranberries all the time and ended up staining one of his teeth with a permanent blue color. The symbol is a combination of runes that blends the initials of the Nordic King, and was probably inspired by this historical figure because the first Bluetooth receiver was shaped like blue teeth. It is original and with legendary references. A great symbol.

4. The @ symbol

The greatest representative of the digital age was not born at the end of the 20th century, not even at the beginning. Its origins are much more distant.

The @ symbol is an Anglo-Saxon palaeographic symbol that represents the Latin preposition “ad”, and over time ended up being used in engineering and mathematics to represent the area. However, its rise to stardom dates back to 1971, when programmer Ray Tomlinson used this symbol on keyboards, but it was rarely used to separate the user’s name from the mail server’s name in e-mail addresses. The rest is history.

5. The Wi-Fi symbol

It is one of the most intuitive and functional symbols you can imagine. The origin of the symbol that represents the Wi-Fi connection is the most modern of our list, it dates from the year 2000 and was born from an agreement of some of the main companies of the sector.

The symbol represents the waves of a radio frequency signal, and is particularly useful because of its versatility in switching on more or less lines depending on the strength of the signal (or if it disappears and is replaced by an exclamation point when no connection is available).

6. The play/pause symbols

Two more classics. It’s difficult to tell the direction of the triangle pointing to the right which is represented by playback on all kinds of video and music devices, although it probably has something to do with the movement suggested by the arrow “moving” horizontally. It is known that it dates back to the 1960s, when it first appeared on cassette tapes on the market at that time.

On the other hand, the origin of the pause symbol does seem easier to determine. It is most likely due to the notation “caesura”, which in musical language means “pause”.

7. The Pandora RC symbol

Okay, this is not as well known as the previous ones, but don’t you want to know what it means?

The Pandora FMS icon, although at first sight it looks like an all-seeing eye, which is logical for a monitoring system, is actually two octopus tentacles. An octopus? Why an octopus? We tell you more in this very complete and interesting article.

And…

Now that you know where both the symbol and the name of Pandora RC come from, how about taking a few minutes to get to know it better?

Pandora RC is a remote computer management program (remote desktop software) that can be very useful for many different activities.

Do you want to know what Pandora RC can do for you? That’ s a great idea! Take a look here: https://pandorafms.com/en/remote-control/

Or you can also send us any queries you may have about Pandora RC. You can easily do this by using the contact form at the following address: https://pandorafms.com/en/contact/

Did you enjoy this article about signs and symbols? Don’t forget to leave a comment at the bottom of this article with your opinion, and take a look at the other articles that are published on this blog.

There is a great team behind Pandora RC that will be happy to help you!