Why is the "hash key" on a telephone so called?
- THE WORD "hash" is a variant of "hatch", which means "to inscribe with parallel lines", as in "hatchure" and "cross-hatch"; it derives from Old French hacher, meaning "to chop", and the dish called "hash" is so named because it contains chopped meat.
R. L. Trask, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton ()
- THE BACKGROUND to the use of the # key on telephones, and its various names, is indeed complex. The key (along with the * key) was added by Bell Labs in the early 1960s as DTMF (tone dialling) was being introduced. The intention was that they would never appear on voice telephones, but only be used for computer communications. The name "octothorpe", referred to by one correspondent, was dreamt up on the spur of the moment by a Bell Labs employee, Don MacPherson, who needed an amusing name for the key to use in lectures to customers who would be using the new equipment. The "octo" derived from the eight points on the symbol. The "thorpe" came from Don's involvement in a campaign at the time to get Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals returned from Sweden. There was no intention to make the name either official or permanent. The full story can be found on the web at: history/octothorpe.the.real.story. The name confusion is made worse by the fact that the hash key (often called "pound" in the USA) was often replaced on British computer keyboards by the pound sterling (£) symbol. Thus, both in the UK and US someone could press shift/3 and come up with a symbol that they would refer to as a pound sign but each would be seeing something different.
Kevin Ashley, London, ()
