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The No Symbol: The History of the Red Circle-Slash
- Cyberdog 3y agoI was very surprised to learn just how new this symbol is. I'm a bit too young for it but apparently there were times in my parents' lifetimes when few Americans would have understood it.
- Animats 3y agoIt's not new. It's been an European standard traffic sign since the 1930s.
- jstanley 3y agoThat's pretty new!
- webwielder2 3y agoPretty much everything except farming and church is new.
- ginko 3y agoFarming has been around for over five times longer than the church.
- d0gsg0w00f 3y agoUhh...I don't have sources but I'd imagine humans prayed to _something_ before they went mammoth hunting or picking berries long before farming.
- marcosdumay 3y agoOrganized religion, writing, and agriculture were a self-supporting set. The people today that didn't develop that set don't pray.
- robocat 3y agoAgriculture == 4chan/internet Religon == memes Writing == telling memes to others
- tialaramex 3y agoThe Church requires that you've decided this needs to be organized, all you need to start praying before you go hunt for food is superstition. The Princes Alice experiments show why superstition might be valuable (and so get preserved in a culture) if you don't have much technology to provide oversight. Children were told to perform a task and that an (invisible) Princess, Alice is watching to check they don't cheat while the adults are away. Superstitious children didn't cheat because they believed in Alice watching them. The non-superstitious children cheated, after first verifying that in fact Alice does not seem to exist (e.g. passing their hand through space supposedly occupied by the invisible princess)
- samatman 3y ago"The church" is a metonym for Christianity.
- gpvos 3y agoIn this case I think it refers to organized religion in general, which is older, roughly dating to the beginning of agriculture and city formation.
- samatman 3y agoThat interpretation only works if you desperately want the comment containing the phrase "the church" to be wrong. If you insist on this unusual interpretation, then yes, farming isn't at least five times older than the church. But if you go with the usual interpretation of "the church" as a metonym for Christianity, as was very clearly intended by the implications of the statement, it is correct. Why not go talk to some Muslims about the Islamic church? Or some Hindus about the church of Shiva? I'm sure you'll find the discussion edifying!
- dredmorbius 3y agoThere was an HN discussion in 2020 about the oldest business or commercial establishment in various countries and/or continents. Many of those are involved with, variously, food service, alcohol, teaching, construction, or banking. In part because those are activities which have been with humans (or at least civilised, that is, inhabiting-cities humans) since the beginning, and have not been supplanted by some newer activity. <https://businessfinancing.co.uk/the-oldest-company-in-almost-every-country/ https://businessfinancing.co.uk/the-oldest-company-in-almost...> HN discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22426289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22426289>
- cratermoon 3y agoYou do know what "the oldest profession in the world" refers to, though?
- marcosdumay 3y agoThe symbol has existed for some good 2/3 of the time international standards existed as a concept. As the articles says on the end, we don't know how old non-standardized versions of it are.
- themadturk 3y agoIf you think about it, though, the symbol has been around longer than most people today have been alive, and for a substantial amount of the time people have been driving. Compared to other symbols, it may be fairly "new" (for example, the Christian cross or Islamic crescent), but in the realm of widely standardized symbols, it's pretty old.
- SamBam 3y agoThat doesn't necessarily contradict what GP said...
- fsckboy 3y ago> an European standard traffic sign since the 1930s and how's the standardization drive going? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitory_traffic_sign#No_motor_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitory_traffic_sign#No_mo... (link somebody else posted)
- Symbiote 3y agoFine? They are all essentially the same, with different artistic style. There can be regional differences on what signs are required. I only checked the Italian one, but that sign only prohibits cars, motorcycles are still allowed. If both are prohibited, they presumably display both signs, or prohibit all vehicles (including bicycles) with that sign.
- fsckboy 3y ago>Fine? They are all essentially the same, with different artistic style. many don't have the slash; some do
- gpvos 3y agoPretty well, so to see.
- webwielder2 3y agoI struggle to find this emoji on Slack on a regular basis.
- Antrikshy 3y agoJust type “no” in search and it should be one of the top options.
- pimlottc 3y agoWikipedia calls it the "No Symbol" [0]. ISO 7010 calls it the "prohibition sign" [1]. In Unicode, it's available as a combining character with the practical name "COMBINING ENCLOSING CIRCLE BACKSLASH" (U+20E0) [2] and in emoji form it's the "NO ENTRY SIGN" (U+1F6AB) [3]. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_symbol 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_7010 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_7010 2: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+20E0 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+20E0 3: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F6AB https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F6AB
- mistersquid 3y ago> Wikipedia calls it the "No Symbol" [0]. ISO 7010 calls it the "prohibition sign" [1]. “Circle-bar” to my mind is the most eloquent and evocative of the names I’ve seen for this symbol. I can’t remember where I heard/read “circle-bar” which was many many years ago.
- HPsquared 3y agoNo entry should be a red circle background with horizontal white bar across the centre.
- layer8 3y agoThat’s U+26D4: https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+26D4 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+26D4 U+1F6AB is for roundtrip compatibility with the Japanese KDDI emoji set (#31 here: http://emoji.digital/kddi-au/ http://emoji.digital/kddi-au/).
- dwheeler 3y agoThe article traces the symbol to March 1931's League of Nations "Convention Concerning the Unification of Road Signs" in Geneva, Switzerland. But someone must have suggested it so it could be added to the convention. Who was that?
- lmm 3y agoAccording to https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/74386/what-is-the-origin-of-the-no-symbol https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/74386/what-is-th... it was developed by a subcommittee of the convention, apparently from scratch (or at least, from signs that didn't have a slash).
- red_admiral 3y agoMy guess is Pflug, the German delagate, to avoid the new international "no parking" sign being identical to the old German "parking allowed" sign.
- bloopernova 3y agoA similarly recent symbol, from the late 1950s, is the peace sign. Designed by Gerald Holtom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Holtom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Holtom (wiki page for Mr Holtom includes a discussion of the peace symbol story)
- ehecatl42 3y agoRe. ubiquity making things hard to find— Recent application naming is infuriating! Consider, in GNOME, for example, Nautilus vs Files. "GNOME Files" does not, of course, help. Same with "Apple Photos". GRRR! About as helpful as trying to debug "An error has occurred".
- formerly_proven 3y agoTrying to hide the real name of the application is some weird gnome pastime.
- Hnrobert42 3y agoApple Photos, Music, Numbers, Notes… It’s truly exasperating trying to surface an answer for a question like “how do I sort photos in Apple Photos by date of photo not date added?” At least Google figured out after the fact that golang made more sense than go.
- bombcar 3y agorenaming iTunes to "music" has pissed me off and making "Apple Music" also refer to a subscription service is even worse. you can only get away with so much by using "music.app" and "photos.app" - and it really doesn't apply on the phone. (Aside: how long until the iPhone is just the Apple Phone?)
- btbuildem 3y agoTL;DR: > March 1931, when the League of Nations, attempting to manage the sudden explosion in road traffic, convened a Convention Concerning the Unification of Road Signs in Geneva It comes from traffic signs in the first half of the 20th century.
- m-i-l 3y agoWas hoping the article might shed some light on the ambiguity of some of the prohibition signs in the UK and parts of Europe, e.g. the "no motor vehicles" sign[0]. Given that the ones with the red circle but without the red slash typically mean up to what is shown is allowed and anything above is not (e.g. maximum speed, maximum width, maximum height), the one showing a car and a motorbike could reasonably be interpreted as anything up to the size of a motorbike and car are allowed but anything bigger (such as a lorry and a bus) are not. Adding a simple slash, as the rest of the world seems to do, and as per other prohibition signs in the UK and Europe (e.g. no right turn) would remove all ambiguity. Wonder if there's some strange history behind that apparent anomaly. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitory_traffic_sign#No_motor_vehicles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibitory_traffic_sign#No_mo...
- Dibby053 3y agoI always thought the slashed ones were ambiguous, as adding a slash on top of a red circle which already signifies prohibition could be interpreted as a double negation.
- seszett 3y ago> that the ones with the red circle but without the red slash typically mean up to what is shown is allowed and anything above is not (e.g. maximum speed, maximum width, maximum height) These number are limits on a continuous domain, where inclusion or exclusion of the limit number itself is basically meaningless. The list of vehicles is a set (without necessarily a clear order) which has fundamentally different properties so it's not surprising the meaning is slightly different. You couldn't have a sign that forbids pedestrians and cars but allows motor vehicles otherwise. The rules are simply that when a red on white sign displays anything other than a number (with or without a slash) it means this thing is forbidden. If it's a number it means a high limit.
- red_admiral 3y agoBack in the days when the League of Nations was deciding all this, there was a road sign in the German Empire consisting of a red circle around a white background with a black arrow pointing straight ahead (and no slash). This did not mean it's forbidden to go straight ahead, it meant it's _mandatory_ to go straight ahead - the thing that later on was changed to the white-on-blue arrow. (examples: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildtafel_der_Verkehrszeichen_im_Deutschen_Reich_von_1938_bis_1945 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildtafel_der_Verkehrszeichen_... but the sign must be older than that). If you want to be picky, the "you must" signs generally had a narrower red ring than the "you must not" ones, but even that rule is not always adhered to on the linked page.
- urbandw311er 3y agoSorry to be that guy, but I was less fascinated and more bemused by this one. Surely the origins of this would simply be somebody formalising the representation of “crossing something out”? An act as old as cave paintings, one assumes.
- SamBam 3y agoWhy assume instead of reading the article? Can you find examples older than 100 years old that show a thing crossed out to mean "don't do this thing?" And how close are they to this representation? That's what the author was trying to find out.
- scottmcdot 3y agoBeing Australian, I accidentally rode my bicycle down the entry lane to a German autobahn after seeing a sign with a bike and a circle around it (not through it).
- sbrother 3y agoI did the same thing in the Netherlands. And promptly studied the local road signs after that terrifying experience.
- gpvos 3y agoYou get far by only knowing the main categories: circle with red border is forbidden, blue circle is mandatory, blue square is informational.
- rob74 3y agoWhite (yellow in some countries) signs with a red circle are always prohibition signs (or speed/weight limits), no matter if there is a bar or not - actually only the "no stopping" and "no parking" signs have bars (two for no stopping). If something is allowed, the sign is white on blue.
- Symbiote 3y agoExcept in Ireland, where the people deciding on the signs really didn't read the standard. See "Taxi stand" and "Parking": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_signs#Indication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_si...
- NelsonMinar 3y agoAKA "bend dexter", in the sense of heraldry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_(heraldry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bend_(heraldry) (Credit for this observation goes to Ryvar in the Metafilter discussion of this article.)
- wyldfire 3y agoInteresting! I'd heard it referred to as a "bar sinister" before but when I looked it up I couldn't find anything to confirm that. I hadn't thought of looking it up in the context of heraldry. I suppose dexter when it's left-to-right and sinister when it's right-to-left?
- WorldMaker 3y agoYeah, which maybe makes it punnily appropriate that Ghostbusters has always used the "bend sinister" version given the theme of ghosts and the modern connotation of "sinister".
- mikerg87 3y agoMost Americans probably became aware of this when it was used in 1984’s Ghostbuster's
- planede 3y agoAnd then there is this no entry symbol, which makes no sense: https://imgur.com/a/oSV1Aen https://imgur.com/a/oSV1Aen Reading the symbol it looks like a person prohibiting entry, crossed out. A double negative.
- gpvos 3y agoA very American article. To Europeans (and people in most other places) the answer is obvious that it comes from the street signs. The only open question is where their designers got the idea from. I was rather bemused that the article takes a third of its length before getting to that point, and almost glances over the remaining question (apparently it comes from the subcommittee that designed the no parking and no stopping signs).