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Smiley celebrates 25th birthdayBig * and 25x@>--->--- for :-)Published Wednesday 19th September 2007 18:40 GMT The "digital smiley" - a cunning series of keystrokes which gave rise to the ubiquitous emoticon - is today celebrating its 25th birthday. That's according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman, who says that at 11:44 am on 19 September 1982, during an electronic bulletin board discussion about "the limits of online humor and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly", he made the following fateful suggestion: "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-). Read it sideways." Fahlman explained: "I've never seen any hard evidence that the :-) sequence was in use before my original post, and I've never run into anyone who actually claims to have invented it before I did. But it's always possible that someone else had the same idea — it's a simple and obvious idea, after all." He added in a university statement: "It has been fascinating to watch this phenomenon grow from a little message I tossed off in 10 minutes to something that has spread all around the world. 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." ® 13 comments posted — Comment period finished The art of tossingPosted: 19:30 19th September 2007 Re: The art of tossingPosted: 20:09 19th September 2007 A nice misquotePosted: 22:15 19th September 2007 Special EditionPosted: 08:29 20th September 2007 Heard a radio interview ...Posted: 08:46 20th September 2007
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