Sep 20, 2012 at 1:30pm

Simple typography that started out as a colon, dash, and parenthesis has now grown up and blossomed into a massive array of features, moods, and gestures. Who would have thought that a happy face :-) could ever lead to rock horns m/, or tongue-tied :-&, or just a simple heart <3?

Today, the emoticon turns 30.

In was on September 19, 1982 that Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman first typed out the emoticon happy face on an online computer science board, according to Carnegie Mellon.

The idea caught on and spread to other universities and eventually to the rest of the Web. And not only did it spread, it morphed into hundreds of different emotions, like grumpy, drunk, and embarrassed.

There are even impersonator emoticons, like Elvis, John Lennon, and Homer Simpson, and they're found on Gmail, the iPhone, and most other typeface platforms.

It's safe to say that today the emoticon is truly ubiquitous. Fahlman never imagined that what he started 30 years ago could ever grow to become so incredibly popular.

"It was ten minutes of my life," he told the Telegraph earlier this month. "I expected my note might amuse a few of my friends, and that would be the end of it."



Source: MASHABLE