History of Symbols
A 6-part narrative series tracing the origins of ASCII, Unicode, emoji, typography marks, Braille patterns, and mathematical notation.
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1
The History of ASCII: How 128 Characters Shaped Computing
Trace ASCII's evolution from telegraph codes to the foundation of modern text — the 128 characters that defined computing's character set for decades.
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2
The History of Unicode: From Babel to a Universal Character Set
How the Unicode Consortium unified the world's writing systems — from the 1987 founding to Unicode 16.0 with over 154,000 characters.
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3
The History of Emoji: From Japanese Pagers to Universal Language
The complete history of emoji — from Shigetaka Kurita's 1999 designs for NTT DoCoMo to Unicode standardization and modern ZWJ sequences.
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4
The History of Typography Marks: From Gutenberg to Unicode
How punctuation marks evolved from ancient Greece through Gutenberg's press to Unicode — the stories behind @, #, &, §, ¶, and more.
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5
Braille in Unicode: How a Tactile System Became Digital Text
The story of Braille's journey into Unicode — from Louis Braille's 1824 invention to the 256-character Braille Patterns block in Unicode.
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6
Mathematical Notation in Unicode: From Clay Tablets to Code Points
How mathematical symbols were standardized in Unicode — the history of +, −, ×, ÷, =, π, ∑, ∫ and the challenges of encoding mathematical notation.