The First Smiley :-)

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday September 12, 2002 @02:31PM from the cave-paintings-be-damned dept.

An anonymous reader points to this excellent bit of online archaeology -- Mike Jones' effort to find the first online smiley. A bit from the site: "After a significant effort to locate it, on September 10, 2002 the original post made by Scott Fahlman on CMU CS general bboard was retrieved by Jeff Baird from an October 1982 backup tape of the spice vax (cmu-750x)." Interesting methodology and a lot of work went into the search -- shades of the Dead Media Project.

20 of 462 comments (clear)

:-( (pad) by undeg+chwech · 2002-09-12 14:33 · Score: 5, Funny

Nostalgia makes me sad :-(
And I've made it my mission... by nakaduct · 2002-09-12 14:41 · Score: 5, Funny

To live to see the last.
1. Re:And I've made it my mission... by pla · 2002-09-12 15:32 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Ah, should I address you as Mr. Rosen, or Mr. Valenti?
Geek & Naming Conventions by Myriad · 2002-09-12 14:42 · Score: 5, Funny

Why is it that for things like this many geeks will automatically think of the same name? Ie, way back when I first saw a :) (ah BBS days) I got its meaning and thought of it as a "smiley". Quickly I found out that was what people called it. This kind of thing happens to most geeks I know.
Yet the moment any of us start coding, damned if we don't come up with naming conventions that mean squat to everyone else. Unless, of course, we've been dictated to use someone elses nonsense! :)

--
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Uh oh... by phillymjs · 2002-09-12 14:45 · Score: 5, Funny

...how long before he finds himself a lawyer, patents a "method of conveying levity via a sequence of characters typed on a keyboard," and sues, well, everyone? :-)

(Oops!)

~Philly
Leftists of the world - get angry. by (void*) · 2002-09-12 14:51 · Score: 3, Funny

It was :-) and not (-:. How ... ungauche! :(
1. Re:Leftists of the world - get angry. by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · 2002-09-12 15:13 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  The backwards ones confuse me - i mean, what the hell is this?
  
  >:{
  
  since ppl started doing them upside down, the complicated ones become unreadable
  
  someone sorta said this, but maybe we need an RFC or a smiley standards (someone email w3 quick!)
  
  --
  Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
2. Re:Leftists of the world - get angry. by mosch · 2002-09-12 15:35 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  )-: damn you, you directionalist bastard.
3. Re:Leftists of the world - get angry. by whovian · 2002-09-12 15:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  what the hell is this?
  
  A female body sculptor flexing ;-)
  
  --
  To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Medical Hazard? by Tablizer · 2002-09-12 14:51 · Score: 3, Funny

It is rumored that Scott Fahlman and his original group currently have persistent neck problems due to the long-term practice of leaning to the left to read text emotion indicators.

For this reason, they have allegedly proposed "vertical ASCII" so that they can be read upright.

(-:

--
Table-ized A.I.
Re:First smiley? by joshua404 · 2002-09-12 14:52 · Score: 5, Funny

Well, great that they found the first smiley, but I will not be satisfied until I see the LAST one. Once upon a time, people could communicate emotions effectively simply through the tone of their writing. Now that people have apparently lost this ability, they use a crude text representation of a facial expression. This is not an improvement.
Lighten the fuck up. :-)
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed by Anonymous Coward · 2002-09-12 15:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Well you're just a fucking genius, aren't you?

;-)
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed by Chris+Brewer · 2002-09-12 15:53 · Score: 3, Funny

Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput. :)

--
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
The Smiley Undermined by Snafoo · 2002-09-12 16:08 · Score: 4, Funny

Every IM and gooey IRC client these days is replacing the noble ASCII smile with the hideous rictus of a yellow dot. Even punctuation is threatened
by the forces of Disnification.

--
- undoware.ca
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed by Magnus+Reftel · 2002-09-12 17:47 · Score: 4, Funny

What more could we ask for from 2 simple characters?
A nose? ;-)

--
print "Yet another p{erl,ython} hacker\n",
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed by extrasolar · 2002-09-12 21:46 · Score: 3, Funny

Except no one knows what the rules for emoticons(?) are. I know rules are uncool and all but... How are we supposed to put smileys into parenthesis (like :))? And goddamnit it always fucks up my paren-matching in emacs. And whats with the ^^&:o/o)) that turns into a stoned pumkin with a santa hat eating a bald chickin in yahoo messenger? And how much happier does three smileys make you compared to one smiley? Sure, I was all gung ho about smileys too. Then they started making them *backward*. WTF? I think it was Scott McNeally who said something like most of us don't deserve the formatting abilities of of even ASCII. This is what he means.
Re::-( (pad) by flacco · 2002-09-12 21:54 · Score: 3, Funny

There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
We've got bigger problem's to worry about.

--
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Re: Anonymous quote by Deven · 2002-09-13 01:43 · Score: 3, Funny

/* Anonymity isn't all it's cracked up to be. */

Who are you quoting? ;-)

--

Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
DOS had a smiley in it.. by teamhasnoi · 2002-09-13 01:58 · Score: 3, Funny

C:
'Course like all else DOS, it was backwards.
Re:Usenet and Emoticons by iamiuru · 2002-09-13 02:09 · Score: 3, Funny

I can see it now. For god only knows how long, Prof. Morris will be getting all the different smiley variations. Well at least if his phone is set to vibrate and he has it in his pants he will KNOW that he is loved and FEEL that love.
;)

--
That is your ass, and this over here is your elbow, and NO they ARE NOT the same thing.