Actually, as an assignment operator it dates back thousands of years:

    let there = light  # fix dark issue

This table on Wikipedia says the inequality symbols were first used in 1631[1]. However guillemets (« ») date to the mid sixteenth century[2] and are still used as quotation marks in many languages. Although according to the page about brackets[3], chevrons were the earliest form of brackets, however I couldn’t find a year.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_mathematical_symbols_...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillemet

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket#History

Recorde is one of those intellectual heroes I only learned of a few years ago. It seems like no big deal now, but using a symbol instead of words to represent am equation was revolutionary.

> apocryphal

I think you mean anachronistic there.

Yes, thank you.