-
Feb 1, 1400
Medieval Manuscripts
Figures and faces are drawn into manuscripts to high light certain lines of text and cue emotional responses. -
Puck Magazine
The American humor periodical unveils tongue-in-cheek proto-emoticons. Its use of type symbols presages ASCII art. -
Ambrose Bierce
In his essay "For Brevity and Clarity," the author and linguist writes: I crave leave to introduce an improvement in punctuation-the siggerpoint, or note of cachinnation. It is written thus and represents, as nearly as may be, a smiling mouth. It is to be appended with the full stop, to every jocular or ironical sentence.. thus: "Mr, Edward Bok is the noblest work of God." -
Ludwig Wittgenstein
In a lecture at Cambridge University, the philosopher proposes that "such words as pompous and stately could be expressed by faces." Such drawings, he argues, would be a good way to describe, say, the melancholic tone of a Schubert composition. -
Lili Movie Advertisement
An ad for the film Lili in the New York Herald Tribune on March 10,1953, reads: Today You'll Laugh, You'll Cry, You'll Love Lili. -
Reader's Digest
A snippet from a story reminds us thet emoticon like smileys were probably common in personal correspondence. -
Vladimir Nabokov
In a New York Times interview, the great novelist imagines the creation of a new piece of type. -
Smiley
A cousin to the typographical smiling emoticon: the insipid yellow smiley face. Blame its early ubiquity on the Paris newspaper France Soir, which begins attaching one to every article with a positive or upbeat takeaway. -
Plato Operating System
The Plato educational computer features in line graphical facialexpressions for use in its forums. -
The "First Internet Emoticon"
In a post on a Carnegie Mellon message board time-stamped 19-Sep-82 11:44, computer engineer Scott Fahlman creates what has generally been considered the first emoticon.