[1] This in turn inspired Steve Kinzler to develop the Picons, or personal icons, which have the goal of offering symbols and other images, as well as faces, to represent individuals and institutions in email messages.
[2] Other systems such as the faces available on the LAN email functions of the NeXTSTEP platform also seem to have been influenced by the original Vismon capabilities.
Many other scientists and engineers of the Computing Science Research Center of the Murray Hill facility were also involved.
All had been spurred by the introduction in 1983 of the new Blit graphics terminal developed by Pike and Bart Locanthi and marketed by Teletype Corporation of Skokie, Illinois as the DMD 5620.
[4] The first programs built around vismon were used to announce incoming mail in a dedicated window, using the 48 by 48 pixel faces.