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Twenty Five Years Of Smileys
By Scott Gilbertson 

September 19, 2007 
10:06:22 AM

Categories: Current Affairs, Humor   

Carnegie Mellon University, the distinguished birthplace of most
cutting edge robotics, one time study hall of mathematician John Nash
and host to an undergraduate Andy Warhol, is also the birthplace of a
somewhat more suspect invention: the smiley.

Love it or hate it, the smiley is well embedded into our cultural
syntax at this point and today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of
its first appearance. Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E.
Fahlman says he was the first to use the now ubiquitous keystrokes
that gave birth to a whole range of emoticons. 

Fahlman posted the first emoticon Sept. 19, 1982 in answer to a
discussion about the limits of humor in online test and how users
could denote comments meant to be taken lightly. Despite the protests
of many an English professor, who claim (quite correctly) that the
limits of humor in text are the result of poor writing skills,
emoticons are here to stay.

For the record Fahlman is open to the idea that he didn�t invent the
emoticon, though he does claim that he has never seen hard evidence
that the sequence was in use before his posting. If you happen to know
different head over to Fahlman�s page and set him straight.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/09/twenty-five-yea.html




"Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any
very remarkable felicities of expression."    - Amos Bronson Alcott