The History of Smileys

The smiley face has a much storied history dating back to the early 1960's, when the yellow smiley face was invented by Harvey R. Ball for a "friendship campaign". Of course this story is in contrast to that of the one portrayed in the movie Forrest Gump where Forrest is splashed with mud in the shape of a smiley face. The yellow smiley was also used as a peace symbol in the form of a smiley button in the early 70's.

Smileys also have an online history. Kevin Mackenzie claims to be the first to use the -) symbol to mean "tongue in cheek". Although Mackenzie first used the symbol in 1979 it didn't catch on mainstream in the 80's when emoticons were invented by Scott Fahlman in order to show emotions on a bulletin board online system.

To this day the smiley craze continues in both the online form and offline form with Smileys appearing all over the internet on web pages, blogs, emails and instant messenger conversations. Offline smileys have been used for t-shirts, buttons, stickers and even as a stamp

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Sources:
http://www.nerdtimes.com/emoticons/index.htm
http://elouai.com/smiley-history.php