The smiley was actually "invented" by Professor Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University in a message to an electronic bulletin board in 1982.
He was discussing the limits of online humour and how to denote comments meant to be taken lightly.
The smiley face and other emotional icons, known as emoticons, have given people a concise way in e-mail and other electronic messages of expressing sentiments that otherwise would be difficult to detect.
The suggestion gave computer users a way to convey humour or positive feelings with a smile - or the opposite sentiments by reversing the parenthesis to form a frown.