Oscar CunninghamMar 11

It looks like the ⍼ saga has finally ended!

The unicode character '⍼' was a mystery first noticed in 2022: https://ionathan.ch/2022/04/09/angzarr.html. It's in the Unicode standard as a mathematical symbol. But no one could find any examples of it having been used, and no one knew what it represented. It was like the only record of an extinct species, fossilized in the Unicode standard.

But now someone has found the document it originally came from! It represents the angle 'Azimuth', and the symbol probably comes from the path light takes through a sextant. https://ionathan.ch/2026/02/16/angzarr.html

(@johncarlosbaez might appreciate this symbol!)

U+237C ⍼ RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW

⟨λ. closure ahead⟩
Show threadNicolas DandrimontMar 11
@OscarCunningham @johncarlosbaez this one is for @th!
Show threadTrammell HudsonMar 11
@olasd @OscarCunningham @johncarlosbaez the part about sextants being used for measuring azimuth is odd -- you almost never use them horizontal and would use a transit to instead.
Show threadTrammell Hudson
@olasd @OscarCunningham @johncarlosbaez if you are in the 1800s and can't afford fancy chronometers, you might measure the distance from the sun to the moon with your sextant to correct your inaccurate clock, but that's the only time I've done anything other than vertical height angles.
Mar 11 at 2:49pmWeb