BS: First Smiley found

Subject: First Smiley found
From: Willa
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 02:51 PM

From ZDNet First 'smiley' found By Matt Loney

"A Microsoft researcher has rediscovered what is believed to be the first known instance of a "smiley", the combination of characters used to signify a smile in email and bulletin board communications.

The smiley has spawned a whole range of emoticons since its appearance on a bulletin board discussion at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 1982. The emoticons, as they are known, have become an important part of the worldwide online social culture because they make it easy to communicate emotions quickly -- something that many people find difficult to express using words.

Mike Jones, who works in the Systems and Networking Research Group at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters, kicked off the effort to find the first smiley in February 2002.

On his Web site, Jones says that many people were involved in the effort to find the first instance of the smiley. "I kicked off the effort... by looking through some old bulletin board program sources," says Jones, on his site. Jones remembered seeing a CMU bulletin board posting in which the characters were first proposed to signify a joke, back in the early eighties.

With help from former CMU School of Computer Science facilities director Howard Wactlar and current director Bob Cosgrove, Jones found backup tapes covering the period from 1981 to 1983. Restoring them required a nine-track tape drive and enlisting the help of a number of people to scan through the postings until the smiley posting was found.

The first use of the characters :-) to signify a smile was, believes Jones, in a posting made on 19 September, 1982, by Scott E. Fahlman.

"I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlmann at the time. "Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(."

The date 19 September, 1982, is now likely to join the lexicon of other significant dates in the information revolution. The Internet is generally considered to have been created 13 years previously, almost to the day. The original PC, meanwhile, appeared in August 1981, and email has its origins in 1971.

Email, like the Internet itself, does not have an exact date of birth. Ray Tomlinson, the American engineer considered the "father of email", can't quite recall when the first message was sent, what it said, or even who the recipient was.
Tomlinson got around difficulties with existing methods of exchanging data by creating remote personal mailboxes that could send and receive messages via a computer network. He also conceived the now-famous "@" symbol to ensure a message was sent to a designated recipient."

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Ron Olesko
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 03:49 PM

So no one ever thought of typing :-) with a typewriter? There had to be typewriter geeks long before computer geeks!

My memory is fuzzy but I don't think it was that new or radical.

Also, I assume you meant that Tomlinson was the person who utilized the "@" symbol for e-mail. The symbol itself has been around much longer then the Internet.

Ron

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: GUEST,guest
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:00 PM

Too bad that the inventor of the "emoticon" and his followers weren't burnt at the stake.

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: InOBU
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:01 PM

Ron Ron Ron... picky picky picky! For example, I found, while doing research at Lasceau, next to a very good painting of a mamoth, the 1970's yellow smiley face guy done in red ochre... with a similar face next to it with the mouth round and open, then the happy face repeted, about which I wrote a paper, proposing it to be the first translated cave painting, being a painting signifing a burp after a particularly tasty eliphant.... hmmmmm. Cheers Larry

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Ron Olesko
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:10 PM

I knew it wasn't original!!!!!! Thanks Larry!

I wonder why they decided on yellow??

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:10 PM

If only the originator had received one cent royalty for each use of the Smiley and those other emoticons developed from his intellectual authorship, think how wealthy he'd be today!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:11 PM

And building on that, if people refused to use the emoticons rather than paying one cent for each use, how much more pleasant the web and email would be today!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Ron Olesko
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:13 PM

I agree :)

oops!

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 04:36 PM

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 13 Sep 02 - 10:29 PM

One would think that a forum with so many bluegrassers would have a bias toward red smileys. Aaaaaarghhhh.....!!!!!


For the uninitiated, Red Smiley was banjo master Don Reno's musical partner for many years.

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Banjer
Date: 14 Sep 02 - 06:35 AM

But Bee-dubya-ell, Red Smiley would not have been the FIRST smiley, which is what the discussion here is. The first Smiley would have been at the very least Red's daddy!

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Sep 02 - 03:26 PM

oo
v
~

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Sep 02 - 03:27 PM

hmmmm...tricky

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 14 Sep 02 - 04:55 PM

Hey Bill D. - What's that thing in the middle? I guess you're trying to use it for a nose. It looks more like someone's butt hanging out of their pants. Must be a new symbol for "moon".

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Willa
Date: 14 Sep 02 - 05:58 PM

It's a 'special character' in symbol font(Greek letter omega?)

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 01:50 PM

yep...I am using WIN98, and I set the font I used to "symbol" and tried to make a non-sideways smiley....but it didn't give me the symbols it said it would...and I didn't have time to struggle with it.....

here is what I was looking at when I tried.

This is a program I use to display the characters in the installed fonts. (I can't find it on the WWW right now, but there are others which will do similar things..I just got a new one and will post it here if it works)

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 02:26 PM

yes...there is another program which will show you characters. You can find it at http://www.CoolWinTools.com

It has a lot of options in it, and I will be talking a close look...

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 02:32 PM

This is a test

Subject: RE: BS: First Smiley found
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Sep 02 - 02:35 PM

well! very clever...it made it colored

Another test