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Daina Bouquin: Imagine it's
nineteen ninety-five, and you're

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sixteen in a bedroom outside
Tokyo.

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It's very late.

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The house is quiet, but you're
awake, sprawled on your bed

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staring at your pager.

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It's a little gray plastic
thing, small enough to close

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your fingers around, with a
narrow screen to display a line

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of numbers.

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Everyone at school has one.

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At lunch break, there's a line
at the payphone by the gym.

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Kids waiting their turn to
press the keypad to send

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messages across the city.

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The one in your hand buzzes.

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O. Ya. Su. Mi.

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It means good night.

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But after the numbers there's
something else.

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A small pixelated shape.

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A heart.

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Now, a pager only listens.

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You'd need a phone to send
anything back, and the phone is

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in the hallway, and it's after
midnight, and you don't want to

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wake your parents.

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So you lie there with the pager
in your hand and watch as the

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tiny screen goes dark.

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You press the button again and
it lights up.

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0833.

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A heart.

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The screen goes dark.

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You press it again.

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Good night, with a heart.

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I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is
Found in the Machine.

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In Japan, the pager was known
as a pocket bell.

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A doorbell you could carry.

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Someone dialed your number and
it rang wherever you happened to

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be.

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A doctor could be called away
from dinner.

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A salesman could find out that
the office needed him.

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It was useful.

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The early devices only summoned
you, but later they added a

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display so the caller could
leave a phone number for you to

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call back.

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You'd find a phone, dial the
number, and ask what they

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wanted.

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But the display didn't know
whether or not the numbers were

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a telephone number.

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It would show whatever numbers
the caller entered.

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And Japanese offers quite a few
ways to read a number.

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Like eight could supply the
sound ha from hachi or ya from

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yatsu.

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By borrowing sounds, shortening
them, and allowing a little

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latitude, you could make a
string of digits sound something

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like a word.

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You could make them mean
something.

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The number 4649 meant "please".

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3341 was "Lonely". 39 means "Thank you." 14106 is "I love you." This kind of number wordplay is called goroawase and
there's nothing from the

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manufacturer to tell you how
this works.

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This wasn't the device's
intended purpose.

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But you could have a whole
conversation this way.

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People even had what they
called bell friends.

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They knew one another by page
or number and sometimes without

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knowing a name or even meeting
in person.

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You could recognize someone by
the messages they sent, by the

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way a conversation picked up
again.

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The numbers you sent through a
payphone could reach a person

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you wouldn't recognize if they
were waiting just behind you.

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Pocket bells got so popular
that some high schools banned

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students from bringing them to
school.

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Then, in 1995, the company NTT
Docomo released a pocket belt

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that could send a small picture
of a heart along with the

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numbers.

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Pagers with the hearts were a
hit.

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The next year, pager contracts
in Japan peaked at over 10

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million.

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Then Docomo made a new, more
advanced pocket bell.

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It was intended to be a
business device for people who

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needed to call the office.

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And it could display kanji.

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It could display the Latin
alphabet.

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But the heart was gone.

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So young users started leaving
Docomo for competing services

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that still had it.

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A man named Shigetaka Kurita
worked at Docomo.

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He had sold pagers and he
remembered watching school girls

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switch to other services when
they couldn't send the heart

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anymore.

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Years afterward, he was still
describing his surprise at how

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much difference that one symbol
had made.

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But Kurita didn't stick to
pager sales.

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By the late 1990s, he was in
his mid-20s and working for

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Docomo, helping develop
something called i-mode, a

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service that would allow people
to check information on the

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little screen and send a message
without having to find a phone

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first.

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With i-mode, there would be
more room for words, but not

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much more room.

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An i-mode email could only hold
250 Japanese characters.

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So Kurita proposed including
things like the heart.

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He had already seen what
happened when one was taken away

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and reasoned that more could be
useful.

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And despite Kurita having no
training in graphic design,

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Docomo agreed, and they gave him
five weeks to design the

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images.

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In five weeks, he needed to
work out which images would

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improve communication.

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What places, concepts,
emotions, and things could

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prevent arguments.

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Which ones could help people
understand each other.

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And he had to figure out how to
draw them in a tiny space.

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Each one could be just twelve
pixels high and twelve pixels

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across.

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Curves had to become small
staircases.

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Circles had corners.

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And there was a problem with
the number 12 that Kurita would

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remember long afterwards.

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There was no middle square.

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Count six columns from the left
and six from the right, and you

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meet at a seam.

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If you wanted a one-pixel wide
line to run down the center of

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your image, like you would if
you were drawing a heart, there

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is nowhere to put it.

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You had to shift the whole
design over.

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And he needed people to
recognize these things at a

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glance on a screen you could
cover with your thumb.

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So he drew pictures people
already knew.

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The symbols on public signs.

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The sun and clouds from weather
forecasts.

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He pulled from Manpu the
shorthand of manga, where a drop

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of sweat could tell you someone
was nervous.

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He added an umbrella, a train,
phases of the moon, a

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high-heeled shoe, a sailboat, a
film projector.

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People would later mistake the
projector for a pufferfish.

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He added an M to mean metro,
but some people used it to mean

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McDonald's.

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Kurita assembled 176 images.

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He thought they would be given
to designers to refine them, but

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they went out into the world as
is.

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They were called emoji.

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E means picture, and emoji
means character.

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Kurita's emojis were early, but
others soon followed.

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Different companies developed
their own, but there was a

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problem.

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The machines didn't all speak
the same language.

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When you send a letter A, you
aren't really sending the shape

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of an A.

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You are sending a code.

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The receiving machine sees that
code and knows this is an A.

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It can draw the A in whatever
font it uses, but it's still an

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A.

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Emoji could work the same way,
except different companies had

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created different codes.

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One phone might know which code
meant airplane, and another

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might have no airplane at all.

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So instead of an airplane, you
might receive a blank square or

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nothing.

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This was exactly the kind of
problem Unicode was built to

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solve.

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The Unicode Consortium assigns
characters shared codes so that

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different machines can agree on
what they're looking at.

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There was an early proposal to
encode Docomo's emoji in Unicode

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in 2000, but it went nowhere.

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Then around 2007, engineers at
Google began pushing for a

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standardized solution.

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Apple soon joined the effort.

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Their products were arriving in
Japan, and users already

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expected to be able to
communicate with these little

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pictures.

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So in 2010, Unicode 6 encoded
hundreds of the symbols used as

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emoji.

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But the heart didn't need a new
code.

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It was already there.

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The heart's Unicode assignment
is U+ 2764.

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It entered Unicode years
earlier among the dingbats, a

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collection of decorative black
typography symbols.

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And Unicode names don't change.

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So the formal name for the red
heart at the end of your late

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night message is HEAVY BLACK
HEART.

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In 2016, Kurita's 176 images
entered the collection of the

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Museum of Modern Art in New
York.

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He paid his own airfare to go
see them.

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The museum exhibited the little
designs in its lobby and

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credited him by name.

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Those tiny designs made to fit
into a 12 by 12 pixel grid on a

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screen were now something you
could go to an art museum to

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see.

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People look at them the way
they look at paintings.

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And you can watch them look and
wonder what they see.

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Because we make them mean
something.

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When you send a skull emoji,
are you one of the people who

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use it for Halloween?

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For danger?

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For goth aesthetics?

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Or are you laughing?

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Is it so funny that you're
dying?

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Do you see the flame emoji and
think the sender is angry?

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Or are they giving you a
compliment?

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Has an emoji ever kept you up
late?

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You fell asleep with the pager
in your hand.

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00:12:46,879 --> 00:12:50,799
By the time you get to school,
there's already a line at the

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payphone.

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You stand in line, rocking a
little, onto your toes and back

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as you wait.

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Then it's your turn.

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You type 0840.

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Your finger hovers for a
moment.

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And then you hit 88.

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You hang up, and somewhere
nearby a pocket bell wakes.

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0840 with a heart.

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00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:28,320
Good morning with a heart.

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00:13:28,320 --> 00:13:36,480
I'm Daina Bouquin and this is
Found in the Machine.

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If you enjoy my stories, please
consider leaving a rating or a

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00:13:45,039 --> 00:13:47,279
review wherever you listen.

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00:13:47,279 --> 00:13:51,840
They really help others find
the show, and I read all of

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00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:52,159
them.

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00:13:52,159 --> 00:13:55,840
And if you're interested in
getting more content from me,

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00:13:55,840 --> 00:13:57,919
you can join the show's Patreon.

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00:13:57,919 --> 00:14:02,159
Just go to
foundinthemachine.com / support

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00:14:02,159 --> 00:14:05,600
to find the link to the Patreon
and other ways you can support

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00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:06,480
the show.

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00:14:06,480 --> 00:14:11,200
Patreon members get access to
Found in the Margins, my mini

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00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:12,960
bonus episode series.

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00:14:12,960 --> 00:14:17,440
Recent episodes have covered
things like CRT Sea Glass and

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Chip Graffiti.

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00:14:18,720 --> 00:14:21,759
Thanks as always for listening.

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I'll see you next time.