Say it with an emoji!
QUESTION Who coined the word emoji?
The word emoji comes from the Japanese
e, meaning picture, and moji, meaning character. It was coined in 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita, an employee of NTT DoCoMo, the leading mobile phone operator in Japan.
The term is related to kanji, Chinese ideographs which make up the bulk of Japanese writing. Kurita also designed the first emojis.
While the emoji is a modern invention, its forebear, the emoticon, has a long history. This pictorial representation of a facial expression or mood uses punctuation marks, numbers and letters.
On March 30, 1881, four emoticons, described as typographical art, were published in the satirical magazine Puck. These four examples used punctuation including brackets, hyphens and full stops to express joy, melancholy, indifference and astonishment.
The emoticon’s internet-era genesis is considered to have occurred in September 1982 when computer scientist Scott Fahlman suggested to a message board at Carnegie Mellon University that :-) and :-( could be used to distinguish jokes from serious statements online.
Shortly after came the name ‘emoticon’, a portmanteau of emotion icon.
In the mid-Nineties, NTT DoCoMo added a heart button to its pagers, which proved popular with younger users. Kurita, who was working on the development team for i-mode, an early mobile internet platform, wanted to design an attractive interface to convey information in a simple, succinct way.
For example, he wanted icons to show the weather forecast rather than spelling out ‘rainy’ or ‘sunny’.
he created 176 pixel images, including a sun, cloud, umbrella and sandcastle, that could be selected from a keyboard-like grid and sent on mobiles and web pages as individual characters.
They look rudimentary today, but have proved remarkably influential. Kurita’s original emoji set is part of the permanent collection at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Michael Richardson, Tenby, Pembs.
QUESTION What became or sons Cyril and Vyvyan?
QUESTION What became of Oscar Wilde’s sons Cyril and Vyvyan? OSCAr WIlDe (1854-1900) was an Irish poet, wit and playwright. At the height of his fame, while The Importance Of Being earnest was being performed in london, he was convicted of gross indecency with men and sentenced to two years’ hard labour in reading jail.
This led to the break-up of his family and ultimately his decline and death.
Wilde had married Constance lloyd, daughter of a wealthy QC, horace lloyd, on May 29, 1884. Cyril was born in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886.
Constance accepted Wilde’s sexual proclivities and the pair were on good terms. After her husband’s downfall, she changed her name to holland, and moved to Switzerland. Wilde never saw his sons, who took their mother’s name, again.
Cyril joined the British Army and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant, royal Field Artillery, on December 20, 1905. he was promoted to lieutenant in 1908 and served in India from 1911 to 1914 with No. 9 Ammunition Column, rFA, at Secunderabad. he was promoted to Captain on October 30, 1914.
When World War I broke out, Captain holland returned to europe to fight. he was killed by a sniper during the Battle of Festubert in France on May 9, 1915, and is buried at St Vaast Post Military Cemetery, richebourg-l’Avoue.
Vyvyan studied law at Cambridge and was called to the Bar in 1912. At the onset of World War I, he was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Interpreters Corps, and later transferred into 114 Battery, XXV Brigade royal Field Artillery.
his wife, Violet Craigie, died of injuries sustained in a fire at the end of the war.
Awarded an OBe, Vyvyan went on to become an author and translator, working for the BBC for six years. In September 1943, he married Thelma Besant, an Australian who, for some 12 years, was the Queen’s beautician.
Thelma persuaded him to write the autobiography Son Of Oscar Wilde (1954), in which he described his father as devoted and loving.
Vyvyan died in london in 1967, aged 80. he once said: ‘Because of my father, I have been suspected of being a homosexual. I — who have wasted my time, my money, my substance on women!’ Janine Marsh, Chepstow, Monmouthshire.
QUESTION Was there a fad in the Sixties for baroque harpsichords in pop music?
FUrTher to the earlier answer about the popularity of the harpsichord in the Sixties, the great record producer eddie Kramer used the instrument to gorgeous effect in the 1973 eponymous album by U.S. glam rock singer-songwriter Jobriath, who was dubbed the American Bowie.
The track I’m A Man is suffused throughout with harpsichord, as is the song Morning Star Ship.
While Bowie cultivated androgyny in the homophobic Seventies, Jobriath was flamboyantly gay in dress and demeanour. Perhaps it was this that prevented him from becoming the star he should have been in the U.S.
he died of Aids in 1983, largely unfeted in his home country.