September 21, 2002
Happy Birthday Mr. Smileys :-)
On September 10, 2002 Jeff Baird retrieved Scott Fahlman's original post that introduced the world to the emoticon as we know it.
It took some digging and Baird's team had to hunt up a lot of old information and equipment to look through the backup tapes of the old spice vax(cmu-750x). But their search through old BB system posts provides us with an interesting history to the introduction of the smiley emoticon.
A personal account of the creation of the smiley by Scott Fahlman sheds some light on the time of creation and the distinct need for such a device.
Baird and Fahlman gave an interview on NPR's All things Considered on September 18th 2002.
Emoticons have certianaly come a long way in twenty years. There is now an ASCII expression for almost anything you can think of. Many people have also opted to leave behind the days of plain ASCII emoticons for small graphics Most commonly called Smileys. There seems to be a smiley for -every- thought and emotion.
I would like to be the first to wish a happy birthday to Mr. :-)
--taken from kuro5hin
Posted at September 21, 2002 12:58 AM | Web
