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New blog post! "Emoji history: the missing years"
https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/05/10/emoji-history-the-missing-years/
In January I bought a long-forgotten personal organiser from Japan and stumbled across a set of emoji that shouldn't have existed. Then I found some more lost emoji, so decided to redraw them all. Enjoy!
I just added printed citations for the emoji from 1990 (NEC PI-ET1) and 1988 (SHARP PA-8500) https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/05/10/emoji-history-the-missing-years/#printed-citations
@gingerbeardman insightful! 
@gingerbeardman So much old tech! 
Makes me think of Pictochat (the chat app of the Nintendo DS running on local Wi-Fi) who also had a emoji panel.
@gingerbeardman Also, regarding the pic you posted, it took me a while to understand that the one in the middle (screenshot below) are probably scissors 
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@meduz you're not the first to think that 
so many of them I had no idea what they were supposed to be, which made them more difficult to recreate. It helped to view them from a distance to figure them out. I still don't know what a few of them are!?
@gingerbeardman That was super interesting!!
@wintersweet super glad you enjoyed it! thank you
@gingerbeardman a) this is very cool. b) I think some of these are intended to be used as repeating texture tiles, for example the row below the playing card heart symbol and a couple at the end of the row with the heart on.
Which means, c) i think this pixel is in the wrong place (move 1 to right)
@drj yes, well spotted! 
there are a few misplaced pixels like this in amongst them all, but I chose to keep it as it is on the original device rather than correct them. I flip-flop between whether that is the right decision, or not, depending on the prevailing wind. Of course, I did probably make a mistake somewhere, but not here.
Images attached are PI-4000 pocket computer vs WD-A521 word processor
@gingerbeardman I think authentic to the original material is right in this case. If it were to ever become a font, then you can use OpenType alts to provide "fixed" versions as an option.
@drj great idea, I like it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437
@pi55d IIRC these can be traced back to Wang Laboratories. So perhaps of Chinese origin?
@gingerbeardman I had to look twice before I understood that the one before "paperclip" was scissors.
I thought it was something else.
@apLundell you're not alone! Now we have to use 
@gingerbeardman Cool! I wonder what the distinction is between this and stuff like Zapf Dingbats (1978) ?
@vaporstack parallel timelines, I only focused on Japanese timeline as they invented the word emoji 
The Japanese lineage comes from symbols used on calendars and in diaries that were digitised for use in word processors (way more popular than PCs at the time) and in the early handhelds communicators I found. 
But there are some close parallels with late 70s DOS character sets traceable to Wang Industries, dingbats, etc. Somebody else will need to dig that hole 
@gingerbeardman Amazing. I'm not a researcher but once I tracked down an obscure glyph https://medium.com/@vaporstack/hunting-sheep-250f7aefa6cb
@vaporstack @gingerbeardman (sorry it's on medium. I wrote it before they threw up the paywalls)
@vaporstack very cool! love it.
if you remember the smiling moon face emoji (1965) in my blog post… well I was scanning a 1991 Mac game recently and they had included it on the sticker sheet. heart warming to see the emoji still in use after 26 years, though of course the game itself is now 33 years old https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@gingerbeardman/113143104063329765