The text-based smiley face appears to have been invented by Scott Fahlman, a research professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. In a post to a university discussion group in September 1982, Fahlman proposed the crucial insight of using a colon-dash-parenthesis [:-)], viewed horizontally, to signify humour.
Since then, the textual smiley face has woven itself into the fabric of Internet culture. It has become de-hyphenated and lost its nose. It has gained the power to denote affection and defuse arguments. Today's instant-messaging clients from America Online and Yahoo go beyond textual limitations to offer thoroughly nonsmiley options, like purple horned demons and green frowny faces.
In his new book, A Brief History of the Smile, Yale University's Angus Trumble traces the development of the phenomenon from the stilted masklike expressions in early Greek sculpture to the yellow smiley face and its Internet counterpart. CNET News.com recently spoke with Trumble, the curator of paintings and sculpture at Yale's Centre for British Art, about his book and his research.
Q: Authors and poets have managed to do without smiley or frowny faces to express subtle emotions. Are Internet users just lazy?
A: It is a very good question. What did people do before emoticons? What did people do before little signs like kisses and hugs? The crosses and zero marks were first used at the end of English correspondence in the mid-18th century. I think the answer is that we are a society of writing creatures in constant search of a convenient form of shorthand.
Could you briefly tell me the history of the smiley face? Your book said that it started in the 1960s.
What one might call the canonical smiley -- the yellow disk with the upturned, crisply shaped mouth and the two black dots for eyes came into existence simultaneously in various places in the 1960s. But it was anticipated by very many kinds of graphic devices with a round shape and a similarly simplified face. Sunkist brand oranges, for example, had cardboard boxes printed with a logo in the 1930s that was very smileylike.
