One of my favorite shows on a lazy Sunday morning is (appropriately) CBS Sunday Morning. One segment was about the invention of emoticons. (8>) In the interview Dr. Fahlman stated that in the early days of inter-office email (imagine that!) none of his colleagues got “my wicked sarcastic humor. So I made up this smiley face so that they would know when I was joking.” (:-D
Since the dawn of communication between man there have been many symbols, codes and punctuation used to communicate emotions and feelings difficult to represent through text. Early examples can be seen in Morse code abbreviations from the 1850’s and print publications in the early 1900’s.
There is no clear date as to when the first emoticon was used nor is it clear who really invented the first emoticon. It is however generally accepted that the common sideways smiley face in use today was invented by Scott Fahlman in 1982.
On the morning of September 19, 1982, the use of the first smiley face and frowning face emoticons was proposed by research professor Scott E. Fahlman, from the department of computer science at the Carnegie Mellon University in the USA. In 2002, this claim was verified after the original back-up tapes containing the postings were retrieved by Jeff Baird. (8>( Continue reading “The History of the ’emoticon’ (8>D”