The symbol #, usually referred to as "pound", actually has a technical name. What is it? (Answer will appear below when you highlight the empty space by clicking and dragging with your mouse.)
OCTOTHORPE
Now, the $64,000 question: what is the origin of the term? (Hint: yes, the first half of the word refers to the 8 points formed by the ends of the straight lines. Now you're halfway there.)
The symbol had been chosen by Bell Labs to be one of two elements on the newly developed "touchtone" phone keypad to be dedicated solely to data use. (The other, as you know, is the * (star) key.) If you're not old enough to remember that all telephones used to have rotary dials, now you know -- that keypad is "newfangled".
One of the developers who was trying to devise a memorable name for the symbol was a sports fan. He began introducing the term "octothorpe" in written communications as an homage to Jim Thorpe, the noted Olympian. He calculated that it sounded technical enough that no one would suspect that he had just made it up out of thin air.
You could look it up.
