The emoji, which is usually considered a modern feature, turns out to have a longer history than we thought. Matt Sephton, a game developer and blogger, researched emoji history and discovered a series of characters from 1988.
Sephton discovered 102 emojis displayed on Japanese PA-8500 devices, covering a wide variety of animals to symbols. Although they look very different from the emojis we are currently using, they remain impressive.
To unravel the history of emojis, Sephton tested some retro Japanese devices that have drawing software. "These devices stemmed from an era before the internet, so there wasn't much information about them online, and they couldn't be simulated. So the only way to find out what they were doing was to read manually or, better, use it yourself," he explained on the blog.
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Initially, he thought SoftBank's first emoji was made in 1997. However, he was surprised to find a character in Sharp PI-4000 released three years earlier, in 1994. Sephton later discovered more emojis in NEC PI-ET1 released in 1990 and PA-8500 released in 1988.
Sephton notes that emoji history is not as clear as we might think. "History of emojis is not as clean as you might think," he wrote. "You can decide for yourself what you consider the first emoji. It depends on our personal definition, so there is no correct or wrong answer."
This discovery shows that emojis have existed longer than many people think, providing new insights into the evolution of digital communication.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
