September 19th was the 25th anniversary of the invention of the emoticon. Hoo-ha! garyg would have celebrated. The ACSII emoticon, read sideways, was invented, apparently, by a guy named Scott Fahlman.But hey. Didja know that proto-emoticons have been around for more years than have personal computers? I didn’t. I assumed, wrongly, that they were part of the information age. But no:
emoticon-like symbols also turned up from time to time before the age of online communication. Urban legend debunker Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com recently found just such a forerunner in the May 1967 issue of Reader’s Digest:
Many people write letters with strong expression in them, but my Aunt Ev is the only person I know who can write a facial expression. Aunt Ev’s expression is a symbol that looks like this: —) It represents her tongue stuck in her cheek. Here’s the way she used it in her last letter: “Your Cousin Vernie is a natural blonde again —) Will Wamsley is the new superintendent over at the factory. Marge Pinkleman says they tried to get her husband to take the job —) but he told them he couldn’t accept less that $12,000 a year —) “
(Reader’s Digest, May 1967, p. 160, citing Ralph Reppert of Baltimore’s Sunday Sun)
