Is It a Set of Icons?

At first it was just a stencil or an alphabet board. In many cases, some kind of tablet. The whole point was that the person could indicate oneio er letter, but it wasn't. Sometimes it was a saxaphone. And sometimes it was like a set of mat equations. It was nos always is always a set of visual icons,. usually sometimes pictographic, but usually typographic - and when they met sparks, imagine some frost nixon kind of movie, but its ome rat.