Turned Capital letter L (pointing to the left, with serifs)

[Michael Everson]

On 4 Jan 2016, at 08:15, Jörg Knappen <jknappen at web.de> wrote:
> 
> Here is a report of a rather strange beast occurring in historical math printing (work of C. F. Gauß) in thw 19th century:
>  
> http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/284483/how-do-i-typeset-this-symbol-possibly-astronomical

The image there is clearly a digit 7.  

> images are here:
>  
> http://www.archive.org/stream/abhandlungenmet00gausrich#page/n129/mode/2up

This will not load for me. 

> http://i.stack.imgur.com/57fN3.png

Again, this is a digit 7. From a different font than the other 7’s set there. 

>  It looks like a big digit "7" or like a turned letter "L". In the accepted answer it was identified with the Tironian note et; an identification
> I'd dispute because the Tironian note Et is usually smaller in size than a capital latin letter.

It is not a Tironian et. The Tironian Et typically has a descender and goes to x-height. Also the horizonal stroke would never be written like that 7, and indeed the angle (if less than 90°) of the descender wouldn’t be so small. 

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/