Why is the "<" symbol named the "less-than sign"?

[Richard Wordingham]

On Wed, 16 Sep 2020 14:36:11 +0200
Karl Pentzlin via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:

> According to the German Wikipedia:
>  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergleichszeichen#Geschichte
> the symbols were devised 1631 by Thomas Harriot in his book "Artis
>  analyticae praxis".
> (Until now, the English wikipedia lacks this information.)

I gave an English Wikipedia reference earlier in this thread.

Richard.