Play Button Emoji ▶

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.

The symbol “Play Button” is included in the “Geometric shapes” subblock of the “Geometric Shapes” block and was approved as part of Unicode version 1.1 in 1993. In 2015, it was also approved as an Emoji in version 1.0 and added to the “AV Symbol” subcategory of the “Symbols” category.