In the early days of the Internet, computer scientist Scott Fahlman ran into a problem on Carnegie Mellon University’s online bulletin boards.

People used the bulletin boards - a kind of primitive online forum - to chat about everything from lost belongings to parking at the Philadelphia university.

“Given the nature of the community, a good many of the posts were humorous, or at least attempted humour,” Fahlman recalled in a 2007 news release by the university.

But with no way to convey emotion via bare lines of text, some readers took satirical or ironic posts seriously, posting ponderous denouncements that sparked more arguments.

In a discussion of possible solutions, Fahlman off-handedly suggested denoting humorous posts with a text smiley face::-)

And so the first text emoticon was born, 40 years ago today, on Sept 19, 1982.

Prehistoric emoticons

Or was it?

People have been using text symbols to represent emotions since at least the 19th century, when telegraph agents came up with their own Morse code abbreviations for popular phrases ranging from “wait a moment” to “love and kisses,” The Atlantic reported.

And a transcript of a speech by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 mentions “(applause and laughter ;)” although there’s some doubt as to whether it was a primeval emoticon or a typo.

The iconic smiley face image, now also an online emoji, was invented by Harvey Ball in 1963 “when he was commissioned to create a graphic to raise morale among the employees of an insurance company after a series of difficult mergers and acquisitions,” Smithsonian Magazine reported.

But Fahlman is widely credited with bringing the text smiley to online communication.

Emoticons take hold

Back in 1982, the newly minted text smiley caught on quickly.

“Within a few months, we started seeing lists with dozens of ‘smilies,’” Fahlman said. The concept soon spread to other universities and research centres.

It wasn’t long before the text smiley swelled into an entire family of emoticons.

Bulletin board posters quickly began adding frowny faces::-( to more serious or negative posts, followed by smileys with glasses: 8-) and winking smileys: ;-).

And things were just getting rolling.

Emojis take over

Forty years later, with the addition of graphic emojis and stickers, there are online icons for everything from sharks to the Eiffel Tower.

The emoji, taken from the Japanese words for “picture” and “character,” came onto the scene in the late 1990s as part of mobile phone software developed in Japan, ThoughtCo reported.

Emojis and emoticons are now a ubiquitous part of the online experience in most places around the world, a study published in 2019 by Frontiers in Science found.

“They not only have unique semantic and emotional features, but are also closely related to marketing, law, health care and many other areas,” researchers found.

In 2015, the Oxford Dictionaries declared the “face with tears of joy” emoji its word of the year.

“There were other strong contenders from a range of fields but (the tears of joy emoji) was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015,” the announcement read.

In 2017, emojis even got their own movie, about which perhaps the less said the better.

But not everyone’s a fan.

“Critics of emoticons argue that they erode the ability of people to communicate clearly and use language creatively in cyberspace, as well as in other forms of writing,” Brittanica.com said.

“Some have said that they are a lazy means of communication,” the encyclopaedia added. “Others note that they negatively affect the credibility of the author in an e-mail message.”

Looking back

Fahlman, now a Carnegie Mellon professor emeritus, is still proud of his creation.

“It has been fascinating to watch this phenomenon grow from a little message I tossed off in ten minutes to something that has spread all around the world,” he said in 2007.

“Wherever the Internet has become a part of people’s daily lives, the smiley has soon followed,” he reflected. “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.”

 - TNS