September 19, 2023 – Emoticon

It was on this day in 1982 that computer scientist Scott Fahlman posted the first documented emoticons 🙂 and 🙁 on the Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board system. The bulletin board system was a forum used by students and staff to discuss a variety of topics, but jokes easily created misunderstandings. Fahlman was in a message board discussion about the working status of a set of elevators on campus. It quickly turned silly, and jokes were flying so fast that some users couldn’t tell if the elevators were actually working or not. The discussion eventually turned to how to denote jokes on message boards, and Fahlman suggested 🙂 to help people distinguish serious posts from funny ones.
Precursors to our modern emoticons have existed since at least the 19th century. There are possible examples of them in a 1648 poem and in a transcript of one of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches in 1862. Though linguists argue that these were likely just typographical errors.
Emoticons were the forerunners of emojis, which originated on Japanese cell phones in 1997. They got increasingly popular in the 2010s as they became available on several operating systems. Today, over 90% of the world’s online population uses emojis or emoticons.
In 2021, Fahlman held an auction for his 2 original emoticons from 1982. They were sold as NFTs and were purchased for $237,500. Learn more here.