The first known use of smiley as an adjective was in 1848. The Gregory Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, was selling a "SMILEY FACE" balloon in 1922. A promotional poster for the film Lili published in the New York Herald Tribune in 1953 had "smiley" on it. The New York radio station WMCA in the year 1962 created a yellow and black smiley face to promote their on-air personalities known as the "Good Guys." In 1963 Harvey Bell designed a "smiley." In the early 1960s, The Funny Company, an American children's TV programmer, had a noseless smiling face used as a kids' club logo; the closing credits ended with the message, "Keep Smiling!" In September of 1970, two brothers in Philadelphia, Bernard and Murray Spain started selling novelty items with a "smiley" and the slogan "have a happy day" In November of 1971, ten thousand smiley buttons were given away at Brigham Young University. The universal smiley symbol is clearly in the public domain. All should be free to draw their own original "smiley" and sell their original art using the word "smiley."
|
