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Re: Where does the term "element" come from?

• From: Frank Manola <fmanola@acm.org>
• To: Liam Quin <liam@w3.org>
• Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:49:44 -0500

Guess it's a good thing they didn't see a rhinoceros!

On Dec 24, 2009, at 10:45 AM, Liam Quin wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 07:27:51AM -0500, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
>> This is a book element:
>> 
>>   <book>...</book>
>> 
>> Why "element"?
>> Who decided to call it element? 
> 
> Actually it is because of a transcription error.
> 
> Descriptive markup was first used in the 1950s by naturalists
> in Africa, and read out loud over the radio to a base station
> where they were carefully written down with a pen.
> 
> The person at the base station misheard and wrote "element"
> instead of "elephant" and the mistake has stuck with us
> ever since.
> 
> :-)
> 
> Liam
> 
> -- 
> Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
> http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
> 
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• References:
  • Where does the term "element" come from?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: Where does the term "element" come from?
    • From: Liam Quin <liam@w3.org>