http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/abraham-lincoln-emoticons_n_1893411.html

Did Abraham Lincoln Pioneer Emoticons? 1862 Speech May Offer Clues

The Huffington Post  |  By Britney Fitzgerald 09/19/2012

Was Abraham Lincoln one of the first people to use the playful emoticon?

Though the text symbol for “winking,” used in our emails, tweets, texts and instant messages, was officially introduced in 1982, the appears in a copy of a speech President Lincoln delivered way back in 1862.

The New York Times wrote in 2009 that a newspaper specialist working for archival company Proquest had spotted a sideways “face” in one of Lincoln’s speech transcripts, printed in the Times….”