The First Smiley?

[Grant Barrett]

A Usenet post which contains the supposed first use of :) as a smiley
or emoticon, from 19 September 1982,  has been uncovered.

http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Smiley/Smiley.html

Apparently, in November of that year more symbols were proposed (by
this man http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~jhm/ ):

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=bnews.sri-unix.4439

A Slashdot thread (with the usual foolishness) disucces the discovery:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/12/2133216&mode=flat&tid=133

--
Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org
Small Business Apple Macintosh Support in New York City
http://www.worldnewyork.org/