Happy BDay :-) !
It has been 25 years ago that professor Scott E. Fahlman, working at the Carnegie Mellon University, for the first time used the 
emoticon (or smiley, depending on your religion on this) in an email.
He used the emoticon on a bulletin board in a discussion on the topic of online humor and the limits of it to express comments meant to be taken lightly. “I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: ,” he wrote. “Read it sideways.”
Variations on the original emoticon started to pop up pretty quickly, like the 
wink variation. The IRC ABC article on this page contains more exotic emoticon such as <:-) (Santa Claus) and 12x@>—>— (A dozen roses).
“I sometimes wonder how many millions of people have typed these characters, and how many have turned their heads to one side to view a smiley, in the 25 years since this all started,” Fahlman said.
The emoticon gave the possibility for text to carry the emotion of a face, showing whether the text was meant seriously or perhaps a joke.
Related posts:
- Happy 15th Birthday, freenode! christel of the freenode network writes in a posting on...
- Happy Bot Day! After valentines day, mothers' day, secretary day (got [...]...
- Undernet Celebrates its 15th Birthday In October 1992 Danny "WildThang" Mitchell, Donald "WHI [...]...
- Beirut IRC Network 2nd Anniversary The Beirut network celebrated its 2nd anniversary on th [...]...
- Stskeeps quits developing for UnrealIRCd In an announcement on the IRCd's website, Stskeeps post [...]...
Tags: IRC
