The Digital Smiley Turns 25

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie-Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman sent the first digital smiley. :-)

The simple combination of colon-hyphen-parenthesis to create a horizontal "smiley face" launched a whole new way of expressing emotions. Smileys or emoticons are now a commonly accepted form of communication in instant messages, text messages and other forms of text-based, digital communication.

The original text of his proposal read:

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

:-(

Twenty-five years later we have many kinds of smileys, some text-based and others graphical, but generally understood by all.

To celebrate the anniversary, Fahlman and his colleagues are starting an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication. The Smiley Award is sponsored by Yahoo Inc. and provides a $500 prize to the winner.

You can read all the background at Fahlman's website.