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Smiley celebrates 25th birthday

You might not know this, but I am a huge Smiley fan and collector since the early 90's. I have everything from a Smiley teapot, a Smiley phone to my recently acquired keychain. With this in mind I want to bring to your attention that 25 years ago today, the two original text smileys, :-) to indicate a joke and :-( to mark things that are not a joke were invented by Scott E. Fahlman, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science.

smiley

His original post at the CMU CS general board, where he suggested the use of the smileys, was retrieved on September 10, 2002 by Jeff Baird from an October 1982 backup tape of the spice vax (cmu-750x) as proof to support the claim.

So if you ever wonder what to give me as a present.....something with an original Yellow Smiley on it is always welcome! Please read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiley