A Computer Science Professor Invented the Emoticon After a Joke Went Wrong

In 1982, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman suggested using:-) for humorous comments after his colleagues took a joke about mercury seriously. On September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University computer science research assistant professor Scott Fahlman posted a message to the university's bulletin board software that would later come to shape how people communicate online. His proposal: use:-) and:-( as markers to distinguish jokes from serious comments. While Fahlman describes himself as "the inventor or at least one of the inventors" of what would later be called the smiley face emoticon, the full story reveals something more interesting than a lone genius moment. The whole episode started three days earlier when computer scientist Neil Swartz posed a physics problem to colleagues on Carnegie Mellon's "bboard," which was an early online message board.