WOW, just a few days ago (September 19) it was worldwide spread and famous emoticons' birthday (Sep 19, 1982)! The signs we're seeing and using a lot these days :-) Yes! They have their own invention story and history and Scott E. Fahlman has been knwon as the inventer. Here you can see what Scott himself has told about those old days...
It was months ago when I got into this site for the first time and read the interesting story on how Mike Jones made his great efforts to discover exactly the first time emoticons have been started to get used.
Here is the historical message from Scott on a conversation thread on how one can expose and transfer his/her emotions in the messages/emails (extracted from old archives)! Really brilliant and interesting piece of IT history ;-)
Armond
Posted by armond at September 27, 2003 07:06 PM