The ubiquitous smiley-face 🙂 emotion, created in 1982 by Carnegie Mellon University, Computer Science Research Professor Scott E. Fahlman, turned 25 on September 19.
By stringing together a colon, hyphen and a parenthesis, Fahlman gave computer users a tool to express emotion in their email messages. For the first time, people were able to communicate humor or positive feelings with a smile, or express negative feelings with a frown 🙁
The little characters have helped dispel misunderstandings and spread smiles for a quarter of a century now. Hoping for many more years of smileys.
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