The equals sign (British English) or equal sign (American English), also known as the equality sign, is the mathematical symbol , which is used to indicate equality in some well-defined sense. In an equation, it is placed between two expressions that have the same value, or for which one studies the conditions under which they have the same value. In Unicode and ASCII, it has the code point U+003D. It was invented in 1557 by Robert Recorde. The etymology of the word "equal" is from the Latin word "æqualis", as meaning "uniform", "identical", or "equal", from aequus ("level", "even", or "just"). The symbol, now universally accepted in mathematics for equality, was first recorded by Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde in The Whetstone of Witte (1557). The original form of the symbol was much wider than the present form. In his book Recorde explains his design of the "Gemowe lines" (meaning twin lines, from the Latin gemellus) And to auoide the tediouse repetition of these woordes : is equalle to : I will sette as I doe often in woorke vse, a paire of paralleles, or Gemowe lines of one lengthe, thus: =, bicause noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle. "The symbol was not immediately popular. The symbol was used by some and (or ), from the Latin word aequalis meaning equal, was widely used into the 1700s" (History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews). In mathematics, the equal sign can be used as a simple statement of fact in a specific case (), or to create definitions (), conditional statements (), or to express a universal equivalence (). The first important computer programming language to use the equal sign was the original version of Fortran, FORTRAN I, designed in 1954 and implemented in 1957. In Fortran, serves as an assignment operator: sets the value of to 2. This somewhat resembles the use of in a mathematical definition, but with different semantics: the expression following is evaluated first, and may refer to a previous value of . For example, the assignment increases the value of by 2.