Greater-than sign

The greater-than symbol is used in various operations that usually pertain to work being done mathematically or with a programming language. The symbol looks similar to a sideways V and has been used in recorded literature as old as the 1560s. Generally, the symbol is used to show inequality between two numbers or expressions. In mathematics, if there are 2 numbers being looked at as an inequality, the greater-than symbol usually goes in between the two and symbolizes that the first number is greater than the second number (For example: 4 > 2, or 102 > 100). There are other combinations of the greater-than symbol and the 'equals' symbol or the greater-than symbol beside another greater-than symbol that are also used mathematically and computationally.

The symbols < and > first appear in Artis Analyticae Praxis ad Aequationes Algebraicas Resolvendas (‘The Analytical Arts Applied to Solving Algebraic Equations’) by Thomas Harriot (1560–1621), which was published posthumously in 1631. The text states: "Signum majoritatis ut a > b significet a majorem quam b" and "Signum minoritatis ut a < b significet a minorem quam b."

According to Johnson (page 144), while Harriot was surveying North America, he saw a native American with a symbol that resembled the greater than symbol both backwards and forwards ( > and < ). Johnson says it is likely he developed the two symbols from this symbol.

The greater-than sign (>) is an original ASCII character (hex 3E, decimal 62).

The character in Unicode is U+003E > GT (HTML > · >); this is inherited from the same value in ASCII.

Apart from this, Unicode also has the following variants:

The greater-than sign is used for an approximation of the closing angle bracket (⟩). ASCII does not have angular brackets.

...
Wikipedia