Where did emojis come from? - Big Questions - (Ep. 219) | Summary and Q&A

TL;DR

Emoticons were the predecessors to emojis, with the first intentional expressive faces made out of punctuation in 1881. Emojis, on the other hand, are little images designed by someone and gained popularity in Japan before becoming ubiquitous in the 2000s.

Key Insights

• 😀 Emoticons were the first known form of expressive faces made out of punctuation, appearing in an 1881 issue of Puck magazine.
• 🔰 Emojis are little images that were initially popularized in Japan and were designed by someone, not made out of symbols or punctuation.
• 🥋 Shataka Karita and his team at dok designed the first set of emojis, which consisted of 176 12x12 pixel images inspired by Japanese art forms like manga.
• 😥 Emojis faced compatibility issues between different cell phone providers until Google collaborated with a company to establish code points, ensuring consistency across platforms.

Transcript

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Questions & Answers

Q: What was the first known intentional example of expressive faces made out of punctuation?

The first known intentional example of expressive faces made out of punctuation appeared in an 1881 issue of Puck magazine.

Q: How are emojis different from emoticons?

Emojis are little images that have been designed by someone, while emoticons are made out of punctuation or symbols that can be typed.

Q: Who invented emojis?

Shataka Karita, who worked for the company dok in the 1990s, gets credit for inventing emojis as part of the team developing the imode mobile internet platform.

Q: Why did emojis gain popularity in Japan?

Emojis gained popularity in Japan because they helped convey emotions in a concise manner, which was useful for people who were slowly adapting to technology when it came to language and communication.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Emoticons, expressive faces made out of punctuation, were first seen in an 1881 issue of Puck magazine and were later incorporated into computer lingo in the 1980s.

• Emojis, little images designed by someone, gained popularity in Japan and were initially developed by a man named Shataka Karita as part of a mobile internet platform known as imode.

• More companies started developing their own sets of emojis, causing compatibility issues between different cell phone providers. The Unicode Consortium now establishes the code points for emojis to ensure consistency across platforms.