September 19, 2012 AT 5:23 pm
30th Anniversary of the Smiley: September 19th, 1982 :-)
So, not only is today Talk Like a Pirate Day, AND the 8th Anniversary of MAKE, it’s also the 30th birthday of the smiley!
From Wired*:
”
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:
: – (
”
With that post, Fahlman became the acknowledged originator of the ASCII-based emoticon. From those two simple emoticons (a portmanteau combining the words emotion and icon) have sprung dozens of others that are the joy, or bane, of e-mail, text-message and instant-message correspondence the world over.
Fahlman was not, however, the first person to use typographical symbols to convey emotions. The practice goes back at least to the mid-19th century, when Morse code symbols were occasionally used for the same purpose. Other examples exist as well.
Have a nice day!
*editor’s note: to prevent WP from rendering these as ‘automatic smileys’, spaces were inserted in between characters.
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1 Comment
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My friend says this information is nice but the Smiley has been known for quite some time now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley