19 September - birthday of the Smiley

Every year on 19 September noted an unusual holiday — birthday-friendly electronic symbol — birthday “Smiley”.

September 19, 1982, University Professor Carnegie Mellon Scott Fahlman (Scott E. Fahlman) first proposed to use three symbols, consecutive — a colon, hyphen and close parenthesis, to indicate “smiley faces” in the text that is typed in on the computer. It was a serious replenishment of the electronic lexicon. History has preserved the letter which Falman sent to local electronic Bulletin Board, which was a prototype of today’s forums and at that time was the main means of communication between employees of the University. 

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