Re: [TCLUG:17392] [OT] Some computing history?

[Kevin Bullock <kbullock@ringworld.org>]

On Tue, 9 May 2000, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote:

> >Incidentally, where in the Goddess's name did '\' come from? Never have I
> >seen this used except in LaTeX and DOS.
> my understanding, was that '/' was already used for command switches, so
> when they needed directory delimiter slashes, they used '\'.

I meant more in a general linguistic sense -- before DOS, before
computers, before typewriters, why does the character '\' exist?