This is the
pound sign. It came about from old
english measurements, though the
weight pound is now
abbreviated lb instead of
#. Most
phones have a
key with this
character, and along with 10 numerals and the
asterisk (
* or '
star') it makes up the standard 12 key phone keypad, devloped by
AT&T for their new
touch-
tone keypad.
Touch Tones, incidently, support 16 keys, the other four are labelled A, B, C and D, and are not normally used.
It, #, is also used in
musical notation to idicate that a
note should be
sharp. The
musical scale includes 12 notes. Some combinations of notes are not in
harmony with each other, so typically you use only 7 of the twelve in a given piece of music. To keep things simple, they only named 7 notes (ABCDEFG), and placed the other five inbetween the seven. The # sign is used to show that the note above the current note is to be used, so an F# would actually use one of the 'extra' five notes that lies between F and G. A flat is the
opposite (ie, a G flat is the same as an F sharp)
In
American english it is most often pronounced 'Pound' in relation to phone and keyboard
buttons, and sharp in relation to
music..