The first smiley

Talk about having WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time on your hands.  One man’s mission, to find the first post a smiley was used in.  After a lot of work, the post, originally made by Scott Faulman in 1982 on the CMU CS general bboard, was recovered from an October 1982 backup tape.  You have to give them credit though, talk about finding a very small needle is a GIGANTIC haystack.  You can bask in the glory that is the first post that started a trend as a means of conveying emotions via text here.