Digital 'Smiley Face' Turns 25

Sep 18, 2007 By DANIEL LOVERING, Associated Press Writer
Digital 'Smiley Face' Turns 25 (AP)
Carnegie Mellon professor Scott E. Fahlman is shown in his home office on Monday, Sept. 17, 2007, in Pittsburgh. Twenty-five years ago, three keystrokes -- a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis -- were first used as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message by Fahlman, the university said. Fahlman posted the emoticon in a message to an online electronic bulletin board at 11:44 a.m. on Sept. 19, 1982. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

(AP) -- It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-)



Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .

Explore further: Pakistan adopts Chinese rival GPS satellite system

add to favorites email to friend print save as pdf

Related Stories

Yahoo unveils makeover of Flickr site

2 hours ago

Reinvigorated technology player Yahoo! Monday unveiled a dusted-off design of its flickr photo platform only hours after the company's dramatic acquisition of blogging site Tumblr. ...

Recommended for you

AP probe further strains Obama, press rapport

20 hours ago

Reports emerged last week that the Department of Justice had secretly obtained two months' worth of phone records of journalists at The Associated Press as part of a larger investigation into a failed al-Qaida ...

Pakistan adopts Chinese rival GPS satellite system

May 18, 2013

Pakistan is set to become the fifth Asian country to use China's domestic satellite navigation system which was launched as a rival to the US global positioning system, a report said Saturday.

British children's on-screen reading overtakes books

May 16, 2013

For the first time, British children are reading more on computers and other electronic devices than they are reading books, magazines, newspapers and comics, according to a study of nearly 35,000 youngsters ...

Exploring the artsy side of 3-D printing

May 16, 2013

Three-D printing technology is a game changer in the arts and crafts world. "It really takes the lid off of what's possible," says Andrej Suskavcevic, president and CEO of the Craft and Hobby Association, ...

User comments : 0

More news stories

Child maltreatment increases risk of adult obesity

Children who have suffered maltreatment are 36% more likely to be obese in adulthood compared to non-maltreated children, according to a new study by King's College London. The authors estimate that the prevention or effective ...

After a decade, global AIDS program looks ahead

(AP)—The decade-old law that transformed the battle against HIV and AIDS in developing countries is at a crossroads. The dream of future generations freed from the epidemic is running up against an era ...