29 Years Ago, the Emoticon Was Born!

Wow! You knew they had to start somewhere!

29 years ago, a smiley was born :-)

At 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982, a man named Scott Fahlman posted a message to an electronic computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University. And with that simple action he did something wonderful: He became the individual who would later be credited as the inventor of :-), an ASCII-based emoticon.

Thanks to the efforts of Microsoft Director of Identity Partnerships Mike B. Jones — who worked at Carnegie Mellon University when the original post was made — and a small team of dedicated individuals, we know that the following is the message Fahlman sent:

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

:-(

If you’re curious about the exact context of the message, then you can actually read through the full “joke” message thread in which it was posted or Fahlman’s “Smiley Lore :-)” post which explains the thoughts that led to the use of the emoticon.”

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