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.