The earliest set of emojis was discovered in a 1988 Sharp electronic organizer



Emoji, as they are also called in English, are believed to be a culture that originated in Japan. The earliest emoji have been discovered in a Japanese electronic organizer produced in 1988.

Emoji history: the missing years ⌘I Get Info

https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/05/10/emoji-history-the-missing-years/

New Earliest Emoji Sets From 1988 & 1990 Uncovered
https://blog.emojipedia.org/new-earliest-emoji-sets-from-1988-and-1990-uncovered/

There are many theories about the origins of emoji culture, but the most widely known is that it was born as a result of the development of i-mode by NTT Docomo in 1999. According to the i-mode origin theory, Kurita Shigetaka, who was in charge of developing i-mode, is often cited as the creator of emoji, but Kurita has stated that 'The first emoji to be used on Japanese mobile devices was on pagers,' and 'As for mobile phones, the first emoji was not the Docomo emoji that I developed, but the Pioneer DP-211SW for J-PHONE,' denying this theory.




Mr. Kurita said that the first mobile phone to feature emojis was the DP-211SW, released in 1997, but emojis have been around for a much longer time if we look at devices other than mobile phones. For example, game developer Matt Sefton discovered that emojis were included on the Sharp PDA 'Zaurus PI-4000,' released in 1994.




Additionally, Sefton discovered that the Sharp PA-8500 electronic organizer, released in October 1988, contained emojis.



The emojis discovered are as follows: Emojipedia, an emoji database site, claims that the emojis on the PA-8500 are the 'earliest emoji set.'



Kurita also contributed an article to the Communications Society Magazine published by the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, titled 'How did emojis originate and spread around the world?' The article includes some interesting facts, such as 'In 1982, computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University were exchanging emoticons, which are equivalent to Japanese emoticons, on a bulletin board-like service,' 'The first smiley face ':-') was posted on September 19, 1982,' and 'In Japan, the first emoticon, '(^_^),' was posted on ASCIINet on January 8, 1987.'

How did emojis come into being and spread throughout the world?
(PDF file) https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bplus/11/3/11_199/_pdf/-char/ja



◆ Forum is currently open
A forum related to this article has been set up on the official GIGAZINE Discord server . Anyone can post freely, so please feel free to comment! If you do not have a Discord account, please refer to the account creation procedure article to create an account!

• Discord | 'What was the first device to use emojis?' | GIGAZINE
https://discord.com/channels/1037961069903216680/1239866663881408583

in Art, Posted by log1o_hf