I just read about this and I am loving the history behind it. Plus I’m impressed that someone has some amazing backup tapes. The emoticon entry on Wikipedia tells us that Scott Fahlman was the originator of the Emoticon. His post from 1982 was recovered in 2002 by a team of computer scientists trying to prove the claim of invention. Scott originally called it a joke marker.
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c> I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(
The term emoticon comes from blending emotion and icon. Interestingly, reading it sideways is a Western approach to using ASCII-based graphics to represent another meaning. East Asian style ASCII “drawings” are called verticons because they are meant to be read vertically. For example, the Kirby <(^_^)>, so called because of its resemblance to the Nintendo game character Kirby.
So, cheers to the computer archeologists. Think about how well your backup and recovery system would stand up to 25 years passing. What would you do differently with that sort of time period in mind?