what is the pound sign
The use of the phrase pound sign to refer to this symbol is found from 1932 in U.S. usage. Before this time, and still outside the U.S., the term pound sign was used to refer to the pound currency symbol (Â£) or the pound weight symbol (lb). An alternative theory is that this name arose from the fact that character encodings used the same code for both the number sign and the British pound sign Â£.