▶ Black Right-Pointing Triangle Emoji

play

U+25B6

Click to copy and paste symbol

Technical information

Name	Black Right-Pointing Triangle
Unicode number	U+25B6
HTML-code	▶
CSS-code	\25B6
Block	Geometric Shapes
Unicode version:	1.1 (1993)
Emoji version:	1.0 (2015)
Emoji category:	Symbols
Emoji subcategory:	AV symbol

Emoji

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mozilla
microsoft
samsung
lg

Emoji meaning

A black isosceles triangle facing right is a very common symbol that can been seen on almost all technical devices. It's a «play» icon or button, pressed when we intend to start playing some music or video. When in 30-40s electrical household appliances started massively spreading in the American market, such term, as industrial design, didn't exist. Some of the symbols were used on the first serial tape recorders in the 1950s. The engineers that worked on the tape recorders production decided to put not only words, but also icons for them. This idea would make the devices language-independent. The key goal was to indicate the direction and speed of the magnetic tape. During 10 years a unified system was being developed. Each company suggested its version, searching for the best one. Only in the late 60s, thanks to the Japanese, the turmoil came to its end. Sony began to use the intuitive system of icons, which has survived till our days. One of the first devices was Sony TC–580 tape recorder. Isosceles triangle (Play) indicated the direction of the magnetic tape during the playback. Double triangles (Fast Forward and Rewind) marked the accelerated tape rewind in the necessary direction. The square denoted a complete stop of a playback. The pause icon, which is two vertical lines, appeared a bit later. It is said to have been borrowed from poets, who used to mark pauses in poems with it. This marking system proved to be very successful and was subsequently used by all manufacturers of household and professional audio and video equipment. Later on, the International Organization for Standardization included the system in the ISO 7000 standard: Graphical symbols for use on equipment. People got so used to the system, that even when tape-free digital devices had been introduced, the symbols stayed.

Black Right-Pointing Triangle was approved as part of Unicode 1.1 in 1993 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015.

Text is also available in the following languages: Русский; Español;

Properties

Age	1.1
Block	Geometric Shapes
Bidi Paired Bracket Type	None
Composition Exclusion	No
Case Folding	25B6
Simple Case Folding	25B6

AV symbol

Encoding

Encoding	hex	dec (bytes)	dec	binary
UTF-8	E2 96 B6	226 150 182	14849718	11100010 10010110 10110110
UTF-16BE	25 B6	37 182	9654	00100101 10110110
UTF-16LE	B6 25	182 37	46629	10110110 00100101
UTF-32BE	00 00 25 B6	0 0 37 182	9654	00000000 00000000 00100101 10110110
UTF-32LE	B6 25 00 00	182 37 0 0	3055878144	10110110 00100101 00000000 00000000