I remember when i was a wee lad playing around with my dad's typewriter and discovering that symbol on my own. That was way more than 25 years ago. 'Course, i didn't even know that email existed until 15 years later.
I remember teletypes with 1" wide punched paper tape to store messages.
Our teletype even had a rotary dial and plastic cards that were used for speed
dialing.....the good ol' days of instant messaging : )
my 1st scientific effort was I assembled a crystal set with the age of 10. its antenna reached the sky through 2 bamboos which, shortly after a while, led the thunder to our house. I survived.
that's 35 years ago.
i'll have to ask my mom when she first used them.... i could swear they're older then that. Perhaps not in a general computer usage, but on typewriters & older machines.
"Some people have told me that the :-) or :) convention was used by teletype operators in the old days. Maybe so. I haven’t seen any examples of this, but it’s plausible, given the limitations of the character set in that medium."