Smile, smiley – you’re 25 years old :-)

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 20 September 2007 13:45

Opinion and Analysis

Back in 1982, presumably on a green screen terminal, Prof. Scott E Fahlman was the first in the PC era to re-introduce us all to the smiley, with plenty of variations since then. Now 25 years old, a new Smiley Award has been created for CMU students in its honour, mixed in with a little controversy over the smiley's true age.
At 11.44am on the 19th of September, 1982, Scott E Fahlman, a Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in an email to his colleagues that: "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-).

Read it sideways.

Professional Fahlman then said: Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use:

:-(

Since then many variations have emerged in ASCII character form , with instant messaging programs and online forums having upgraded to graphical smilies some time ago, although the text variations are always available if desired.

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary, an annual Smiley Award has been created, with an annual US $500 prize. In a comment published by Prof. Fahlman at Google News , the Professor notes that the Smiley Award is for “innovation in technology-assisted human-to-human communication”, but is “intended for current students (graduate and undergraduate) at Carnegie Mellon University”.

Prof. Fahlman continues that: “This is meant to be a small, fun award to stir up more creativity and fun on our campus. Maybe someday there will be an award of this type that is open to everyone, but judging that competition would be a very big job. Anyway, please stop sending me "Smiley Award" entries unless you are a CMU student”.

Prof. Fahlman also goes on to defend the claim to bringing :-) and :-( to the attention of his colleagues 25 years ago, saying that he did just that, and never claimed to be first to use or invent the idea of using the symbols in this way.

At Prof. Fahlman’s web page on the smiley , he says that: “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. But it’s always possible that someone else had the same idea – it’s a simple and obvious idea, after all”.

The Prof. continues that: “Some people have told me that the :-) or :) convention was used by teletype operators in the old days. Maybe so. I haven’t seen any examples of this, but it’s plausible, given the limitations of the character set in that medium”.

He goes on to say “So, the smiley idea may have appeared and disappeared a few times before my 1982 post, but it is pretty clear from the timing that my suggestion was the one that finally took hold, spread around the world, and spawned thousands of variations”.

That’s why Prof. Fahlman’s action should be seen as heralding the re-introduction of general awareness of smileys and emoticons. Typewriters had been around for decades by that time after all, and the idea of using : - ) together . One commenter to a Monsters and Critics article on the topic claims that Ambrose Pierce used the :-) symbol in his celebrated book “The Devil’s Dictionary” over 100 years ago, although a quick search of a free online edition of the book uncovers no such symbolisms – I’ll have to check a printed copy.

So, whether the smiley is 25 years old or 125, there’s been a lot of clowning around *<:o) with the smiley’s :-) original form, and whether you love them or hate them, remain an integral part of many people’s online communications, and subtly changing our language yet again.

Yikes! =8-0