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In the modern sense as the equal sign, first attested in The Whetstone of Witte (1557) by Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, in which the two parallel lines expressed equality, because, as Recorde wrote, "bicauſe noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle" ("because no two things can be more equal").
When used in big O notation, the = relation is asymmetric i.e. is not equivalent to . For a wider discussion on this usage, refer to this English Wikipedia article.