Smiley Emoticon Turns 25 :-)
September 18, 2007
| 8:50 PM
The horizontal smiley face, created by pairing a colon, a dash and a closing bracket -- like this :-) -- turned 25 years old on Tuesday. Carnegie Mellon University researcher Scott Fahlman says he invented the emoticon at 11:44 p.m. on Sept. 19, 1982.
On his university Web page, Fahlman claims the keyboard concept came to him because humorous comments posted on the school's bulletin boards were often misinterpreted.
"In at least one case, a humorous remark was interpreted by someone as a serious safety warning," he wrote. Fahlman said he also suggested the use of :-( to indicate a message was meant to be taken seriously, though that symbol evolved into a marker for displeasure or anger.
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