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The Smiley Face Turns 25 :-)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the heh dept.

klubar writes "Another milestone of online communications has been reached. The smiley turns 25, according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman who says he was the first to use three keystrokes. 'Language experts say the smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect. Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982, during a discussion about the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.'"

2 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Um, look at the article. by Higaran · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article is about how the smiley face is used for humorus purposed, so how many geeks missed that the title was actually a joke, looks like just about everyone so far. Wow I don't know if I should be happy that I got it, or terrified that I did. Well anyways. (.) (.) V

  2. Re:Editors... by dld121 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is bogus... They were using "smiley" face symbols long before we used them on computers. "Teletype" - used these many many years before the 1980s.