Slash History
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who wrote the code that transformed a private computer network into the web two decades ago, has finally come clean about the about the infuriating // that internet surfers have cursed so frequently. What is the point of the two forward slashes that sit directly infront of the “www” in every internet website address?
The answer, according to the British scientist who created the world wide web, is that there isn’t one.
Now browsers automatically put them and the http in we tend to forget them but in the early days of t'internet they were important. I had an internet company called http://www Ltd which we sold back in 1996.
The problem with the slash was no one could agree the name and then some geeky guy would start calling it a Solidus and another even geekier guy would respond...
The names solidus and shilling mark have the same background. In the Commonwealth of Nations, before decimalisation, currency sums in pounds, shillings, and pence were abbreviated using the '£' symbol, the 's.' symbol, and the 'd.' symbol (collectively £sd) referring to the libra, the solidus, and the denarius. The 's.' was at one stage written using a long s, ∫ that was further abbreviated to the ⁄ symbol, and suppression of the 'd.'; thus '2 pounds, 10 shillings, and 6 pence', often written as £2 ⁄ 10 ⁄ 6 (as an alternative to '£2 10s. 6d.'), and '6 shillings' would often be written as 6 ⁄ -. This usage caused the names solidus (given the abbreviation's historical root) and shilling mark to be used as names for this character.
The solidus is used in the display of ratios and fractions as in constructing a fraction using superscript and subscript as in 123 ⁄ 456 , or on the same level as in 23 ⁄ 50.
The solidus is similar to another punctuation mark, the slash, which is found on standard keyboards; the slash is closer to being vertical than the solidus. These are two distinct symbols that have entirely different uses. However, many people do not distinguish between them, and when there is no alternative it is acceptable to use the slash in place of the solidus.
Typographers should note that both the ISO and Unicode designate the solidus as FRACTION SLASH U+2044 and the slash as SOLIDUS U+002F. This contradicts long-established English typesetting terminology.