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The earliest example of what could be deemed a smiley was discovered by archaeologists working in southern Turkey who found a 1,700 BCE ceramic jug with faint markings that followed the pattern of a now-ubiquitous symbol: two dots and a curve. Unearthed seven years after the extensive excavations began. -
In 1648, poet Robert Herrick wrote, "Tumble me down, and I will sit Upon my ruins, (smiling yet:)." Herrick's work predated any other recorded use of brackets as a smiling face by around 200 years. However, experts doubted the inclusion of the colon in the poem was deliberate and if it was meant to represent a smiling face. -
The Typographic pear is a calligramme which was published on the cover of Le Charivari of February 27, 1834, subverting the magazine's obligation to publish the condemnation by presenting the text in the form of a pear. -
The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"). -
The transcript of one of Abraham Lincoln's speeches in 1862 recorded the audience's reaction as: "(applause and laughter ;)". There has been some debate whether the glyph in Lincoln's speech was a typo, a legitimate punctuation construct or the first emoticon. Linguist Philip Seargeant argues that it was a simple typesetting error. -
Before March 1881, the examples of "typographical art" appeared in at least three newspaper articles, including Kurjer warszawski (published in Warsaw) from March 5, 1881, using punctuation to represent the emotions of joy, melancholy, indifference and astonishment. -
The first known typographical emoticons annotated with emotion classes, such as "joy", or "melancholy", appeared probably in the U.S. satirical magazine Puck 5 in 1881.