Smiley completes 25 years

By abhishek at 18 September, 2007, 2:30 pm

While the internet might be 12 years old or so (atleast in the public domain) and the online chat might have been around for much less time than that, the pioneering smilie syntax has just celebrated its 25th Birthday!

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Scott Fahlman has proclaimed to be its inventor. Although it is an idea that could have come to anybody, he says that he doesn’t believe anyone using it before 11:44 am on Sept 1982 when he was typing away to glory about how one can use symbols to represent online humor!

While today almost all mobile messaging carrying humorous text make use of this beautiful representation of a smiling face, a few english teachers from England are unhappy because they believe that this is killing the subtle english humor as the students are unabashedby using such symbols in their essays and answers