25th birthday of the emoticon

Colon, dash, closed paranthesis… If this doesn’t immediately ring a bell, you probably lived under a rock for the last couple of years. I’m talking about the smilie : – )
This series of characters or keystrokes is celebrating its birthday today – the 19th of september.

Exactly 25 years ago, on September, 19th 1982 it was “invented” at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (US) where Scott Fahlman first introduced the : - ) and : - ( emoticons to add emotions to humorous emails. This idea caught on very quickly and spread across to other universities. This also led to variations of the original emoticon such as ; - ) or .

Nowadays, chats, webpages or other apps use countless variations, styles and sets of emoticons. As the technology progressed, new ideas were used to add color, animation or sound to these little guys and gals.

Source: theregister.co.uk, Wikipedia: Emoticon.
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