This week marked the 25th birthday of the smiley face emoticon. It was first used by Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman in a bulletin board post at 11:44 am on Sept 19, 1982 where he proposed it’s use to mark a joke.

Here is a copy of Fahlman’s famous post:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

:-(

Since then there are now a multitude of other emoticons which are used to convey all sorts of emotions. One of my favorites would have to be the evil grin >:-)

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Filed under: computers, society