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Happy Birthday to the Emoticon, Which Is At Least 134 Years Old

While emojis are de rigueur at the moment, the humble emoticon is older than the internet.

​March 30 marks the 134th anniversary of the first appearance of the emoticon—well, depending on whom you ask. On March 30, 1881, Puck (a humor magazine) published a sm​all item showing facial expressions using only typographical characters. But some people argue the emoticon actually cropped up as early as 1648.

The introduction of the emoticon in the online world has widely been attributed to Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. On September 19, 1982, Fahlman suggested on the C​MU message board that the character sequence :-) be used to distinguish joking or sarcastic posts. "Read it sideways," he explained.

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But the use of typography to imitate facial expressions predates the internet by a good century (and possibly even longer). And let's be clear, emoticon specifically refers to typographical representations of facial expressions (with a few exceptions <3), not to be confused with emoji, which are pictorial representations of all kinds of objects (from facial expressions to slices of pizza) that are creat​ed using unicode.

There's also kaoji, which also uses typography but includes Japanese characters, resulting in a wider array of possible combinations from ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻. Oh, and remember ​ASCII art?

The humble emoticon is crafted using only the ASCII keyboard and while it's no longer a very popular form of online expression (emojis are HOT right now), for a long time it was the only way to visually imitate faces or other images using just a keyboard.

When Puck published its emoticons 134 years ago, the joke was that the letterpress department of the magazine didn't see the need for cartoonists to create art, as they could do it themselves using only the characters on hand. The results are clear examples of emoticons, though turned upright instead of on their side:

"For fear of startling the public, we will only give a small specimen of the artistic achievements within our grasp, by way of a first installment," the piece read. "The following are from Studies in Passions and Emotions. No Copyright."

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In its little lark, Puck likely marked the beginning of a form of communication that decades later would become a hallmark of the digital age. But there are those who argue whether this is indeed the first appearance of emoticons.

There is a New York Times tran​script of an Abraham Lincoln speech from 1862 that includes what may have been a winky face emoticon:

"Fellow Citizens," it reads. "I believe there is no precedent for your being here yourselves, (applause and laughter ;) and I offer, in justification of myself and you, that I have found nothing in the Constitution against."

But it's not clear whether this was intended to depict a wink, or if it was just a typo. There's also a Robert Herrick poem from 1648 where a smiley face appears in a line: "Tumble me down, and I will sit / Upon my ruins, (smiling yet :)," but again, there's plenty of d​ebatethat this was a typo, or just Herrick's personal understanding of how punctuation ought to be laid out (there wasn't exactly consensus on it back in the 17th century).

Even if you don't believe it's not the first ever emoticon, the Puck piece is one of the earliest clear examples we have and it provides our little smiles and winks with a specific birthdate. Though emoticons cropped up here and there over the years that followed, it truly was the internet that propelled the emoticon into common usage.

So happy birthday, emoticon! Though you've largely been replaced by emojis and kaojis of late, you've been helping humans express themselves for so much longer—and you'll always be there for those of us whose website doesn't support pictorials. :D XD :P