Computing
Scott Fahlman
Computer scientist, inventor of the emoticon
Born 1948
Photo: Scott E. Fahlman's wife · Public domain
«I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways.»
Scott Fahlman works on knowledge representation and neural networks, but is best known for a single message board post in 1982 suggesting that :-) and :-( be used to mark jokes and serious remarks. Every emoji in use today descends from that suggestion.
Key achievements
- Invented the emoticon in a bulletin board post, 1982
- Created the Cascade-Correlation neural network learning algorithm
- Co-authored Common Lisp, a standard of the language
Universities
- Carnegie Mellon UniversityProfessor
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Research professor in the computer science department, where he proposed the smiley in 1982.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Took his bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees at MIT, finishing in 1977 in artificial intelligence.
Facts
- The original 1982 post was recovered from backup tapes twenty years later after a long search through old archives.
- He proposed the smiley to solve a real problem: people on the department bulletin board kept mistaking jokes for serious warnings.
- He has said he dislikes the graphical emoji that replaced the typed original, preferring the sideways version.