Learn about the origin of familiar technology icons

In today's digital age, it is no longer strange to be exposed to a lot of technology icons, but few can turn to interesting facts behind technology icons like Bluetooth. , USB, Play button . and more is how.

In the framework of this article, interesting information about some extremely popular icons in the computer user interface in particular or electronic devices in general will be revealed.

1. Power icon (source)

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Back in time when World War II took place, engineers at the time often used binary to mark the power button of the machine with the number 1 meaning 'open' and vice versa that meant ' off . In 1973, based on this idea, the World E-Council decided to take a stylized image of 0 and 1 interlocking to indicate the standby status of a certain device. However, a short time later, a well-known electronics organization called IEEE changed the definition of the symbol to be wider and the symbol you are seeing implies the power button, the trigger button. of an electronic device.

2. Ethernet connection icon

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The Ethernet port icon is designed by an engineer working for IBM named David Hill . According to his accounts, this symbol is actually cut from a diagram that simulates available local network connections at the time. In particular, each square block refers to a computer or a connected station.

3. Bluetooth icon

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Referring to the origin of the Bluetooth name, you must remember the story of the Danish Viking king Harald Bluetooth , a celebrity who has the ability to unite people and contribute greatly to the unification of Dan. Circuit and Norway.

Besides the name history, the Bluetooth icon is also attached to the above king. Accordingly, the familiar Bluetooth logo of today is a stylized way of writing some of the characters in the name of King Harald in the way of Nordic people at that time.

4. Pause icon (pause)

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In fact, the pause icon has nothing to do with technology, in that it is a sign in the music to indicate a pause or pause.

5. Music playing icon (play)

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It is a familiar icon but unfortunately the Play button image with a circle around a triangle does not have a specific origin. This symbol is said to be the first to appear on reel-to-reel in the mid-60s of the last century. Besides the image you are seeing, this icon also has some quite familiar variants such as two overlapping triangles that just rewind or rewind.

6. USB icon

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Born at the same time as USB 1.0 technology, this familiar symbol was designed to follow the trident of the sea god in Roman mythology Neptune. However, instead of using sharp peaks in all three branches of the symbol, the designer changed the other two branches from the triangle to the circle and the square to refer to the synchronization with all devices when used. USB standard.

7. Standby status icon

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After the IEEE organization changed the ' standby ' icon as mentioned above, the organization came to the conclusion of choosing a moon-shaped symbol to indicate that the device is in standby mode. Currently, the moon symbol is quite widely used on electronic devices in the US and Europe, however, in other countries its popularity is not really high.

8. The standard FireWire communication icon

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In 1995, a small team at Apple responsible for developing FireWire began embarking on designing the logo for the completely new technology they were developing. The original goal was to replace the SCSI communication port, FireWire promises to bring a much higher speed connection method for digital audio and video devices. It is known that for this reason designers have devised a three-branch symbol representing three elements of data, sound and images. Initially, this icon was white but later it turned yellow and now nobody knows what the reason for this color change is.

9. @ symbol

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In 1971, a programmer named Raymond Tomlinson decided to insert a certain symbol between the computer network addresses to distinguish the section that represents the user name and the remaining elements, from which @ officially became into an extremely familiar element in the Internet world.

However, before @ was used for this purpose, it was also printed on some keyboards for accounting purposes in the 1885s with the same meaning ' at the rate of . '. Deeper back in the past, many studies have suggested that @ even dates back to the 6th century when a monk used it as a way to replace the word " ad " (in Latin, meaning 'where', 'where to go' because this word is too easily confused with AD (short for Anno Domini, meaning Yuan) .

10. Command button icon on Apple computer

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When working to convert keyboard command menus, Hertzfeld , a member of the first Mac development team and colleagues, decided to add a special function key. The idea is simple: when combined with certain other keys, this ' Apple ' button will perform a certain command ( at that time the button does not have the current logo but carries the logo of Apple ).

When the plan was submitted to the late CEO Steve Jobs , he immediately felt dissatisfied and reacted: ' There have been too many Apple icons present, it's too weird!' . Then, designer Susan Kare tried searching in the international design icon dictionary to find inspiration and stop at a rather strange symbol that implies a tourist attraction in the campsite in Sweden. . Later, it was modified and became the Command button.

11. Pointer icon waiting on Apple computer

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First appeared in OSX operating system to refer to the status of an unresponsive system. Many people believe that this ' wheel ' is an alternate development version instead of a clock pointer in the first version of Mac OS. So far, the origin and ideas that encompass this design have not been announced by Apple.