Smiling for 25 years

Hard to believe, but this week sees the twenty-fifth birthday of the emoticon; the web’s language of facial gestures.

In 1982, when the internet was still the exclusive stomping ground of scientists and military personnel, Scott Fahlman (a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science) suggested that the :-) symbol should be used in the subject line of an online bulletin board post to denote a humorous or non-serious topic.

As the internet grew this tiny gesture escaped the confines of the University’s bulletin board and began popping up on other boards and in emails, soon mutating to cover not just smiley faces, but frowning faces :-( , winking faces ;-) and grinning faces too :-D

"Nobody ever guessed that this would catch on. I certainly didn't," said Fahlman, who is still on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon university.

As the internet became mainstream, so too did the emoticon with (animated) image based variations appearing of new notice and message boards. The vocabulary of the emoticon also expanded almost as quickly as the medium in which it was based, with 'smilies' appearing for hangovers, hugs, batting eyes, dumb comments, raspberries and more.

Today the number of emoticons available is in excess of 2000, more than even the most hardened Internet Messenger could use in a years worth of online conversion.

Happy Birthday Smiler ;-)