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From: Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Emoji History: The Missing Years
Date: Mon, 13 May 2024 01:14:36 -0000 (UTC)
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Emoji History: The Missing Years ♥
==================================
2024-05-12
by @gingerbeardman

During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came
across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo
functions. I bought a couple of them to see if they did anything cool
or interesting. These sorts of devices are pre-internet, so there's
no much about them online, and they can't be emulated, so the only
way to find out what they do is to get first hand experience by
reading the manual or, better, using one yourself. It's difficult to
find these devices in working condition, as most of them have screen
polarisers that have gone bad over time, but if you're lucky you can
find one.

<https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/10/21/
list-of-vintage-japanese-pixel-dot-art-software/>

1994
====
One such device I bought was the Sharp PI-4000, from 1994. This is a
pocket computer that rolled out of Sharp's involvement in the
development and manufacturing of Apple's Newton MessagePad. In 1993
Sharp did their own licenced version of the Apple Newton MessagePad
H1000, the Expert Pad PI-7000, but just like Apple's device it wasn't
as successful as they'd hoped. But before that, in 1992, they'd made
a device called the PV-F1 which was the first touchscreen-only PDA.
After the Expert Pad failure, Sharp took another attempt at the
concept and came up with the PI-3000 in 1993. This solved all the
problems with the PV-F1, most notably size and cost. The device I
have, the PI-4000, was released a year later and features higher
memory capacity. The PI-3000/4000 devices could transfer data via
infrared, connect to a modem to send faxes, and by the PI-5000 in
1995 could connect to cell phones to send emails. They all use a
simplified—but still quite complicated—version of the multi-window
operating system that had been developed for the PV-F1.

<https://cdn.gingerbeardman.com/images/posts/
emoji-history-sharp-pi-3000.jpg>

<https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/MessagePad_H1000>

<https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Sharp_Expert_Pad_PI-7000>

Sharp Zaurus PI-3000 "Personal Information Tool" (1993)
=======================================================
So I was trying out the PI-4000, the memo function is pretty cool
allowing you to draw in different dither shades and pen widths, and
use stamps to add symbols to your memo. These are mostly map-related
things like road and rail junctions, buildings, and train stations.
Pretty cool. Then I tried typing some messages on the device and as I
explored the myriad of keyboard input mechanisms I came across
something rather familiar (sorry about the awful photo—it's the best
I could do, honest—the screen is very reflective and the pixels are
so far from the backing they cast individual shadows!):

<https://cdn.gingerbeardman.com/images/posts/
emoji-history-sharp-pi-4000-emoji-picker.jpg>

Look! It's an emoji picker on the Sharp PI-4000 (1994)

At this point, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing because I
was under the impression that the first emoji were created by an
anonymous designer at SoftBank in 1997, and the most famous emoji
were created by Shigetaka Kurita at NTT DoCoMo in 1999. But the Sharp
PI-4000 in my hands was released in 1994, and it was chock full of
recognisable emoji. Then down the rabbit hole I fell.

<https://emojipedia.org/softbank/1997>

<https://emojipedia.org/docomo/1999>

<https://cdn.gingerbeardman.com/images/posts/
emoji-history-sharp-pi-4000-emoji-table-16-16.png>

Emoji present on the Sharp PI-4000 (1994)

1991
====
A little more reading, and a tip from my friend @chamekan on Twitter,
unearthed the fact that the NEC PI-ET1 in 1991 also contained emoji.
The device is literally the coolest thing you've ever seen. With
system software written by video game developer Hudson Soft its
character set features emoji that can be typed inline, and it also
features a "montage function" that allows you to create faces for
each of your contacts--15 years later we'd see something similar in
Mii on Nintendo Wii in 2006. The emoji on this device are a lot less
well designed, in my humble opinion, than those on the Sharp devices.

<https://twitter.com/chame>

<https://youtu.be/8_w8elG3w0Y?t=248>

<https://cdn.gingerbeardman.com/images/posts/
emoji-history-nec-pi-et1-emoji-table-20-20.png>

Emoji present on the NEC PI-ET1 (1991)

A word about word processors
============================
By now I was in contact with Keith at Emojipedia, who mentioned that
he remembered a Sharp device with emoji, a word processor. I found
one in the Sharp WD-A521, from November 1990, which featured higher
resolution versions of the emoji designs found on my Sharp PI-4000.

<https://emojipedia.org/>

<http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/Emoji/
SHARP-WD-A521p457-458.pdf>

Perhaps there are other word processors from around that time that
also contain emoji? I understand from my friend Izumi Okano that
Japanese software developer Enzan-Hoshigumi, most famous for their
Macintosh software and clipart, had created pictograms for one of the
Canoword word processors around 1986. So at this point I'm thinking,
why would the emoji on a word processor be ignored on the timeline of
emoji history? Was there anything else being ignored?

<https://twitter.com/haeckel>

<https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2021/12/16/
tomoya-ikeda-macintosh-artist/>

Before cell phones became prevalent there were pagers, or beepers, in
Japan these were known as Pocket Bell. Initially they would only beep
and show a number, and people would use "beeper slang" to form words
by using numbers whose pronunciation was similar to words and
syllables. Necessity is the mother of invention! Eventually pagers
would be able to send and receive text. It was perhaps only natural
that emoji find a home on these devices, with the most notable being
the heart ❤️ emoji. But the date of this transition is 1995, which is
earlier than the SoftBank emoji from 1997 but later than my Sharp
PI-4000 device.

<https://twitter.com/s7ephenwithaph/status/1785939813432254950>

A note about beepers
====================
As an aside, it's interesting to understand how emoji were typed on
pagers/beepers. They weren't selected using a picker, which would
have required cycling through a huge range of characters, but rather
typed in numeric digits which narrows the cycling down to far less
characters.

<https://cdn.gingerbeardman.com/images/posts/
emoji-history-pocket-bell-pager.jpg>

Pager cheat sheet

<https://ima.goo.ne.jp/column/article/6981.html>

> The numeric code: 21 91 15 24 12 23 78
> ... would map to: カラオケイク？
> ... which means: KARAOKE?

Wild. Typing text this way must have felt like programming machine
code directly in hexadecimal!

What makes it emoji?
====================
I was chatting to my friend Louie Mantia, who has designed many emoji
in his career, discussing the earlier emoji I had found in my 1994
device. Louie asked me to confirm that I could type emoji inline with
text, giving me the example W😲W, which was his criteria for the
symbols to qualify as emoji. If I couldn't do that, he suggested we
could only consider the symbols as icons.

<https://lmnt.me/blog/>

<https://cdn.gingerbeardman.com/images/posts/
emoji-history-sharp-pi-4000-emoji-wow.jpg>

Passing the Emoji test on the Sharp PI-4000

So if I can type them inline amongst text on my device from 1994 that
was capable of connecting to other devices and sending messages, then
surely they should be considered the first emoji? Why do we,
currently, only count emoji as emoji if they're on a mobile phone?
I'm also wondering when these emoji might have been designed. Were
they created in 1994 for the PI-4000, in 1993 for the PI-3000, or
earlier for another device?
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