Emoticons or “Emotive Icons,” (emotive meaning “appealing to or expression emotion,” hence “icons that express emotions”) have been around in vertical form since the early days of the typewriter. However, sideways emoticons seem to be a surprisingly recent invention, only going back about three decades.

Before the days of LOL and even apps to aid parents in understanding their teenager’s “text-speak,” a man named Scott E. Fahlman wanted his colleagues and students to understand the difference between a sarcastic joke and a nasty barb when typed. (Sarcasm is so common in online communication that today we even have a name for mean-spirited online comments – “snarking:” the act of making rude or critical remarks or otherwise “pranking” another person, normally anonymously and online.)

Fahlman was part of a group of scientists and students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) who frequently communicated via an early online newsgroup to discuss a wide variety of topics. In these groups, if someone failed to understand that some sentiment was meant to be sarcastic or a joke, they would “post a lengthy diatribe in response,” explains Fahlman, “that would stir up more people with more responses, and soon the original thread of the discussion was buried. In at least one case, a humorous remark was interpreted by someone as a serious safety warning.”

So Fahlman came up with a sideways smiley and posted it on the newsgroup in September of 1982. This is the earliest documented posting using the now common “smiley” :-) and “Frowny” :-( emoticons, so Fahlman gets the credit.

Many have since claimed that they used it before him, without having any documented evidence to support their claims.  And Fahlman himself thinks it highly probable that other people were using these particular notations before him, being a very simple idea.

Regardless if they did, it was Fahlman’s post that popularized and spurred on the creation of new emoticons. The idea caught on quickly at CMU and it soon spread to dozens of other universities, research labs, and computer networks. Some people have even made a hobby out of compiling all sorts of smileys expressing various sentiments.

So how do we know?  Where’s the proof? In 2001, someone at Microsoft restored and started digging through old backup tapes of the original email archives, where the original bulletin board discussions were posted. And you think you keep too much old mail? 

Fahlman didn’t make a dime off his invention, which doesn’t bother him a bit. He continues to work at CMU, researching artificial intelligence.

Source: www.Wikipedia.com