The smiley had been a part of online communication since September 1982, when Carnegie Mellon professor Scott Fahlman proposed the ‘:-)‘ configuration as a way of denoting a joke in written text.

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But popular smiley ‘emoticons’ such as :-) and :- ( which use regular keyboard characters to add feeling to a text or email are celebrating their 29th birthday.

The first emoticon — the text smiley — sprang into existence 40 years ago on Sept. 19, 1982, and emojis have been part of online life ever since.

Charles Ball talked about the history of the Smiley Face symbol. In 1963, the original version of the Smiley Face symbol was created in Worcester, Massachusetts, by Charles Ball’s father ...