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In 1999 Shigetaka Kurita, part of the team behind NTT DoCoMo's i-mode mobile internet service in Japan, drew 176 emoji, each on a grid of just 12 by 12 pixels. It is the best-known early emoji set, and New York's Museum of Modern Art added it to its collection in 2016.

MoMA collection, 2016

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The story behind the card

i-mode, launched in February 1999, let people in Japan send email and open simple web pages on their phones, but the screens were tiny and messages were short. Kurita wanted small symbols that could carry information such as the weather, a mood or a place in a single character, and his set covered weather, transport, hearts, faces and everyday objects. He is often called the father of emoji, but his set was not the first: in 1997 a phone from the rival carrier J-Phone already offered 90 small symbols, though it sold poorly. Emoji spread worldwide from 2010, when Unicode, the international standard that gives every character a fixed code so it appears on any device, added them.

Türkçe oku
Shigetaka Kurita, 1999'da Japonya'da NTT DoCoMo'nun i-mode adlı mobil internet hizmeti için 176 emoji çizdi; her biri 12'ye 12 piksellik küçücük bir kareye sığıyordu. İlk emojilerin en bilineni olan bu set, 2016'da New York'taki Modern Sanat Müzesi'nin (MoMA) koleksiyonuna girdi.
MoMA koleksiyonu, 2016

Şubat 1999'da hizmete giren i-mode sayesinde Japonya'da cep telefonundan e-posta gönderilebiliyor, basit internet sayfaları açılabiliyordu; ama ekranlar küçücüktü, mesajlar da kısa olmak zorundaydı. Kurita, hava durumu, bir ruh hâli ya da bir yer gibi bilgileri tek bir karakterle anlatabilecek küçük simgeler istedi. Seti hava durumunu, ulaşımı, kalpleri, yüzleri ve gündelik eşyaları kapsıyordu. Kurita'ya sık sık “emojinin babası” denir, ama onun seti ilk değildi: Rakip operatör J-Phone'un 1997'de çıkardığı bir telefonda 90 küçük simge zaten vardı; yalnız telefon pek satmamıştı. Emojiler 2010'dan itibaren bütün dünyaya yayıldı. O yıl, her karaktere hangi cihazda olursa olsun aynı görünmesi için sabit bir kod veren uluslararası standart Unicode, emojileri de kapsamına aldı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Emoji
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