To help with communication for what became an increasingly diverse international collection of athletes and audience, Tokyo in 1964 unveiled pictograms to convey the characteristics of each sport ...

In the span of less than five minutes, three tireless performers managed to pose as pictograms from 50 disciplines spanning 41 Olympic sports, including basketball, skateboarding, and triathlon.

Olympic pictograms really took off at the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games (more on that in a bit), but the use of symbols instead of letters and words at the international sporting event goes back as far ...