A Microsoft researcher is claiming he's traced the origins of the first ever smiley :-).

Mike Jones at the firm's Systems and Networking Research Group says he unearthed the original emoticon after six month's "computing archaeology".

The discovery was made after he and former colleagues trawled logs from bulletin boards at the Carnegie Mellon University in the early eighties.

They say the definitive posting dates back to September 19 1982 and reads: "I propose that the following character sequence for markers :-)."

If their claims are true it means the ubiquitous emoticon celebrates its twentieth birthday next week.

-- Anonymous, September 13, 2002

Answers

doesn't that put a :-) on yer monitor?

-- Anonymous, September 14, 2002