EMOTICONS ARE 30 YEARS OLD NOW :-)

Published on September 19, 2012

Today is the 30th anniversary of the emoticons 🙂

In September 19, 1982 Carnegie Melon University computer science professor Scott Fahlman was the first to suggest using these three symbols: 🙂 in computer texts in order to show a ‘smiley face’..

So if you’re happy with using the emoticons, you should can this man 🙂 or not 🙁

Fahlman ‘invented’ the first smiley emoticon thinking it would help people on a message board at Carnegie Mellon to distinguish serious posts from jokes. So, he proposed the use of 🙂 and 🙁 for this purpose, and the symbols caught on.

The original message from which these symbols originated was posted on September 19, 1982. The message was recovered on September 10, 2002and here it is quoted:

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

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

:-(

HAPPY AND EMOTIONAL TYPING 🙂