The creator of the Emojis did not make money

Shigetaka Kurita was the creator of the well-known emoticons that are used daily by all social networks. However, the man did not receive a penny for this. He claims that he never thought his Emojis would go this far. And now see how these have become a universal language for all human beings in the world.

The copyright for the creation of the Emoji was left by the company for which Shigetaka Kurita worked at that time. He says that, if he had known that they would take such force, " he would have signed a document certifying his authorship and allowing him to collect copyright." Maybe he would have an island instead of being interviewed by PAPEL. But he didn't and here we are.

" The emojis [pronounced emochis] themselves are pictograms like the signs of a smiley face :-), which cannot be patented", explains their inventor. "But NTT DoCoMo, the company I worked for, got the rights to design the emojis I developed."

Between 1998 and 1999, at the age of 26, Shigetaka Kurita (Ogaki, Japan, 1972) designed the first batch of pictograms and they were used for short messages, at that time there were some search engines called Pocket Bells that were used by young people, in part because they had the symbol of the heart.

The first emojis designed by the Japanese were launched by DoCoMo in February 1999 for the I-Mode service, the creator wanted to express in an understandable and immediate practical way the feelings of a common person. The first images were 176 of 12x12 pixels in black and white.

These were initially created for exclusive use in Japan, but to their surprise their spread was worldwide. However, there are still many Emojis that represent Japanese culture. There are more than 1,800 emoticons that are used by almost 90% of the world's population.

Although in Japan many of the Emoji were created as an expression of a specific feeling, the world uses them with a number of possible interpretations.