blastfromthepast
2nd March 2006, 02:10 PM
〒, ゆうびんマーク【郵便マーク】, ゆうびんきごう【郵便記号】
■ The symbol 〒 is used in Japan to represent the post office and conventional mail. It appears on mail boxes, post office buildings, and post office publications. It also appears in written addresses before the 郵便番号（ゆうびんばんごう） "postal code." It is called 郵便マーク or 郵便記号（きごう）. (The latter name and the English "postal mark" are the names of the symbol used in the JIS X 0208 character standard.)
At least two explanations have been offered for the origin of the symbol, which seems to have been adopted 1887. One is that it is a modified form of the katakana テ, which represented the first sound in the name 逓信省（ていしんしょう） "Department of Communications," or of the kanji 逓. (That government ministry existed from 1885 and 1949, when it was broken up into 郵政省（ゆうせいしょう） "Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications" and the short-lived 電気通信省（でんきつうしんしょう）, the predecessor to today's NTT.)
The second explanation is that the postal authorities in Japan had originally planned to use a capital T as their symbol but modified it to 〒 after learning that T was an international symbol for inadequate postage.
A call to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in June 2000 failed to yield a definitive answer. In fact, the authorities who should know the history of such things seem uncertain about the origin of 〒.
http://www.jekai.org/entries/aa/00/nn/aa00nn25.htm
So, I have found the first SEARCHABLE, TYPEABLE, and HIGH OVT symbol.
■ The symbol 〒 is used in Japan to represent the post office and conventional mail. It appears on mail boxes, post office buildings, and post office publications. It also appears in written addresses before the 郵便番号（ゆうびんばんごう） "postal code." It is called 郵便マーク or 郵便記号（きごう）. (The latter name and the English "postal mark" are the names of the symbol used in the JIS X 0208 character standard.)
At least two explanations have been offered for the origin of the symbol, which seems to have been adopted 1887. One is that it is a modified form of the katakana テ, which represented the first sound in the name 逓信省（ていしんしょう） "Department of Communications," or of the kanji 逓. (That government ministry existed from 1885 and 1949, when it was broken up into 郵政省（ゆうせいしょう） "Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications" and the short-lived 電気通信省（でんきつうしんしょう）, the predecessor to today's NTT.)
The second explanation is that the postal authorities in Japan had originally planned to use a capital T as their symbol but modified it to 〒 after learning that T was an international symbol for inadequate postage.
A call to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in June 2000 failed to yield a definitive answer. In fact, the authorities who should know the history of such things seem uncertain about the origin of 〒.
http://www.jekai.org/entries/aa/00/nn/aa00nn25.htm
So, I have found the first SEARCHABLE, TYPEABLE, and HIGH OVT symbol.