Other computer languages may use the equals sign with the traditional “equivalency” meaning. Photo: John Sauter via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain In computer programming languages in general, the equals sign doesn’t exactly mean two things are equivalent, instead, it functions as an assignment operator, setting the value of some statement to a following statement. FORTRAN is believed to be the first computer language to make use of the equals sign, with the sign being included in revisions to FORTRAN in 1957. However, the equals sign is often used in other fields, such as in computer programming.
In math, using the equals sign asserts that two statements or variables are equivalent to one another. Beyond that, Rercorde helped introduce the world at large to concepts of data manipulation and quantification, with theories and instructions on applying mathematics to various domains such as navigation, commerce, land surveying, and astronomy. Recorde’s equals sign and other contributions to mathematical theory and operators gave computer scientists a ubiquitous and universally recognized symbol to assign values and assert a quality. It is arguable that Recorde laid the foundation for the discipline of computer science, as computer science is at its core about processing, creating, and collecting data. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.” - Neil DeGrasse Tyson A vertical equals sign, rather than a horizontal equals sign, may have been used throughout the 1600s, with the now universally used horizontal equal sign becoming standardized over the course of the 1700s. This gave Recorde’s equals sign some extra influence, as when combined with + and – the equals sign could easily be used to assert mathematical equations that took much longer to write out. However, Recorde had introduced English speakers to the now-famous German symbols for subtraction and addition: “+” and “-”. One reason that Recorde’s symbol may have been slow to catch on was that in the 16th century Latin still heavily influenced communication, and the term “aequalis” was frequently just shortened to “Ae” or “oe” if an abbreviation was required. While Recorde’s new equals sign succinctly implied equality between two values, it wasn’t widely adopted until much later. Photo: By Robert Recorde –, Public Domain, A representation of the first known equation, equivalent to 14x + 15 = 71.
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