Today marks an interesting passage for those apt in Internet shorthand. 30 years ago today, Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, thought of a way to differentiate a joke from a serious statement on the electronic message board. What he devised (see Fahlman’s original note below) was two simple groupings of symbols, :-) for joke, :-( for not joke, thus inadvertently created the first official emoticon. Even though variations of it, like Emoji, have grown in popularity during the last 30 years. None can really top the original emoticon in simplicity and application. Happy birthday Smiley and wishing you many more to come!
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