It might be hugely popular today with those writing e-mails, chatting via instant message windows, sending phone texts, or consumed by social networking habits, but the ‘colon-hyphen-parenthesis’ smiley face has actually been around for rather a long time – 25 years in fact.
Specifically, Scott E. Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has laid claim to being the world’s first person to ever utilise the ‘smiley face’ form of communication, when he added it to a computer message way back in 1982, reports the Associated Press .
"I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman in creating the world’s first emoticon, "Read it sideways." Fahlman’s original smiley face was posted to an online electronic bulletin board on September 19, 1982, which was discussing the restrictions of online humour and how to easily discern the true meaning of light-hearted comments.
By way of commemorating today’s 25-year anniversary of the smiley face, Fahlman and his colleagues at the research university in Pittsburgh are to introduce the Yahoo-sponsored "Smiley Award" which will exist as a $500 USD annual student competition for innovative technology-assisted, person-to-person communication.
"I've never seen any hard evidence that the :-) sequence was in use before my original post, and I've never run into anyone who actually claims to have invented it before I did," wrote Fahlman via Carnegie Mellon’s official Web page dedicated to the introduction of the smiley face.
Despite his apparent creation of the original sequence, Fahlman also conceded that, "it's possible that someone else had the same idea," as him regarding the communication potential and benefits of the smiley face: "It's a simple and obvious idea, after all," he added.
Since 1982 and the phenomenal spread of the Internet, the emoticon icon system has become an invaluable tool for those using online text-based communication methods. Now, of course, ingrained software in message and e-mail applications convert the typed symbols into complete character faces that instantly convey emotion between users, replacing the need for spoken intonations.
Fahlman’s initial sequence has evolved so far as to see people accessing a wide range of (often animated) emoticons that range from a simple smile through to floods of tears and raging anger.
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