Smiley

For other uses, see Smiley (disambiguation)}}}.

A smiley is a sketchy representation of a smiling face, most often coloured yellow. (On the Internet, "smiley" often means emoticon.) The opposite of a smiley is a frowny.

Contents

1 Invention and representation
2 Smileys using computer keys
3 Smileys in popular entertainment
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Invention and representation

An early known instance of using two points and a semicircle to represent a smiling (and frowning) face is in a newspaper advertisement in the New York Herald Tribune, March 10, 1953, on page 20, columns 4–6. Promoting the film Lili, starring Leslie Caron, the ad read as follows:

Today

You'll laugh ☺

You'll cry ☹

You'll love ♥ Lili

The film opened nationwide, so the ad may have run in many newspapers.[American Dialect Society Mailing List, subject Smiley] (March 1953), 13 October 2001

The smiley face, a yellow button with a smile and two dots representing eyes, was invented by Harvey Ball in 1963 for a Worcester, Massachusetts based insurance firm State Mutual Life Assurance. Though there was an attempt to trademark the image, it fell into the public domain before that could be accomplished.[Who invented the smiley face?] (from The Straight Dope)

However, Franklin Loufrani of London based company SmileyWorld says he came up with the image in 1968 and is trademarked across 80 countries. As with David Stern of David Stern Inc., a Seattle-based advertising agency also claims to have invented the smiley. Stern reportedly developed his version in 1967 as part of an ad campaign for Washington Mutual, but says he did not think to trademark it.Hunt, Judi. (November 15, 1988). Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Article entitled "Ad Man Sad-Faced Over Misuse of Symbol".

The graphic was popularized in the early 1970s by a pair of brothers, Murray and Bernard Spain, who seized upon it in a campaign to sell novelty items. The two produced buttons as well as coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers and many other items emblazoned with the symbol and the phrase "Have a happy day" (devised by Murray). By 1972 there were an estimated 50 million smiley face buttons throughout the U.S., at which point the fad began to subside.

The smiley was one of the main icons adopted by the acid house dance music culture that emerged in the late 1980s. Especially in the UK, the logo was especially associated in the dance culture underground with the drug Ecstasy.

There have been variations such as reversing the mouth shape to get a sad face. The symbol has been satirized with a smile and three dots (a mutant), and has been reborn as the image of the Microsoft Bob software and Asda & Wal-Mart's "Rolling Back Prices" campaign. In 2006 Wal-Mart sought to trademark the smiley face in the US, coming into legal conflict with SmileyWorld over the matter.

The smiley has become a staple of Internet culture, with animated GIF and other image representations, as well as the ubiquitous text-based emoticon, " :) ". The smiley has been used for the printable version of characters 1 and 2 (one "black," the other "white") on the default font on the IBM PC and successor compatible machines, though modern fonts for graphical user interfaces often don't include those characters.
The following Unicode character points are smileys:
☹ 0x2639 White Frowning Face
☺ 0x263a White Smiling Face
☻ 0x263b Black Smiling Face

Smileys using computer keys

:) -_- +_+ ^_^ *_*

The Wingdings font also includes a smiley:

Keeptalking, a product of Unet2 Corporation, was one of the first companies to implement a text-graphic smiley system into their chat software, years before it became popular. While their system still runs today, it never caught on or became popular despite its being one of the original places to see smileys.

In modern days, the smiley is often the symbol of humor.

In May 2002, Luke Helder, a midwestern pipe-bomber, tried to replicate a smiley face in his pattern of pipe bombs. His first 16 bombs formed circles, the first in Nebraska and the second on the border between Illinois and Iowa. Those bombs completed the eyes. Two other bombs in Texas and Colorado were apparently the beginnings of the smile. However, he was captured before he completed it.

A certain species of Hawaiian spider, Theridion grallator, AKA the Happyface Spider, has some morphs which display an uncanny smiley-face pattern on its yellow body. Others have patterns that remind of grinning clown faces.

The smallest incarnation of the smiley was created by Paul Rothemund of the California Institute of Technology. He used strands of DNA in a method he calls DNA origami to construct a complex two-dimentional nanostructure in the shape of a smiley face.

Smileys in popular entertainment

Faceball 2000 (Game Boy) screenshot

The film Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) comically featured the smiley being "invented" when the main character wipes his mud-covered face off with a yellow t-shirt, inspiring a struggling businessman with the makeshift design.
The film Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) has a brief "smiley bombing" scene on the side of an office building. A similar face previously appeared in the Fight Club novel.
The yellow smiley is a recurring theme in the comic book series Watchmen (Alan Moore & David Gibbons, 1986). The smiley is used as an insignia by the character named "The Comedian." An image of a smiley face with a streak of red (originally blood) across it both begins and closes the series, and appears on the cover of the graphic novel reprint.
In the comic book series Transmetropolitan the smiley with three eyes logo features as the symbol of the Transient Movement, a group of humans in the process of morphing their DNA with that of aliens, and was later used as a symbol of the series itself. The 2001 movie Evolution used a similar smiley in promotions a number of years later.
The first-person shooter game MIDI Maze, 1987 (for the Atari ST) and its follow up Faceball 2000 (for various handhelds and consoles) exclusively used 3D-rendered smileys of various shapes, expressions, and colors as its players and enemies.
In Timescape, an episode of , Captain Jean-Luc Picard drew a smiley face in the cloud created by a warp core breach in progress that was frozen in time and laughed hysterically for a moment before becoming extremely panicked, all as a result of "Temporal Narcosis"
Unet2 Corporation implemented Smileys in their Keeptalking chat system years before they became popular. Due to mismanagement of the company and network by James and Greg Monaco, they failed to capitalize on the smiley phenomenon.
"Smileys" is also the name of a gang in the Rockstar video game Manhunt.
WWE wrestler Mick Foley's most common logo is a smiley with his trademark Mankind mask over it.
A smiley can be vaguely seen on the bloodstained medical gurney in the crash scene of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Picard (experiencing temporal narcosis) draws a smiley face in the steam produced by a warp core breach

References

External links

[Extensive Smiley :-) article] - extensive article about Smiley :-), based on Internet research
[More history on the internet :) face, with old bbs posts]
[Copy of the original bbs post]
[A Short History of the Smiley Face]

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