They do mention that in the article:

"Fahlman also readily admits that he did not invent the emoticon all on his own. There’s evidence that both the idea, and the thing itself, existed prior to his office antics. A century ago, copy-setters at a satirical magazine jokingly created typographical “studies in passion and emotions” designed to look like faces. Fahlman only credits himself for the smiley’s “turn your head to one side principle” and its particular colon-hyphen-parenthesis combination of characters."

Actually, the first written example is in Shakespeare's 1st folio - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/shakespeare-and-emoticons/

And here is an emoji from 1913 [0], accompanied with a footnote: "The author felt the need to enrich the Polish spelling with a new symbol, which he dares name wink. This symbol, whose absence was till now sorely felt, particularly in lyric poetry, should soon become as indispensable as the colon, dash, exclamation mark, etc."

Given the words of the poem, the similarity of the emoji to a female sexual organ is not accidental IMHO.

[0] https://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Strona:PL_Tadeusz_Boy-%C5%BBe...

According to Mitchell and Webb [0], Thomas Hardy wanted to end 'Jude The Obscure' (IIRC) with a sad face smiley just in case people hadn't realised that it was supposed to be a sad novel.

[0] That Mitchell & Webb Sound, Series 5, 2015