Vintage Selfies: People Posing with Selfie Sticks Before They Were a Thing

 

However, the introduction of the selfie stick revolutionized group photography, making it easier than ever to take the ideal shot.

Although the selfie stick may seem like a modern invention, its roots go back further than one might imagine.

The origins of the homemade selfie stick can be traced back to 1925. An image from that year shows a man using a long stick, extending beyond the frame, to draw a self-portrait with his wife.

During this era, amateur box cameras lacked the ability to focus on self-portraits when held at arm's length, requiring the use of remote shutter devices such as a stick or cable.

In one scene, a character uses a silver stick to take a photo of himself and another character. She smiles at the end of the stick, which then glows and immediately prints a picture from the handle.

In 1983, the Minolta Disc-7 camera had a convex mirror on the front, allowing people to take self-portraits. Its packaging also shows a camera mounted on a stick for this purpose.

A "telescopic extender" for compact handheld cameras was patented by Ueda Hiroshi and Mima Yujiro in 1983, and a Japanese selfie stick was featured in a book titled "101 Un-Useless Japanese Inventions" in 1995.

Although the selfie stick was dismissed as a "useless invention" at the time, selfie sticks later gained global popularity in the 21st century.

Canadian inventor Wayne Fromm patented his Quik Pod in 2005, which became commercially available in the United States the following year.

In 2012, Yeong-Ming Wang patented a "Multi-axis Omni-directional Shooting Extender" capable of holding a smartphone, which won a silver medal at the 2013 Concours Lepin.

The term "selfie stick" did not come into widespread use until 2014. Advanced versions of selfie sticks can also hold a laptop computer for selfies taken with a webcam. By late 2015, the market offered a wide variety of selfie sticks.

Molly McCaugh of Wired magazine said in October 2015, “Some are very, very long; Some are not that tall; There are some glares. Some look like hands. There are some spoons. But at the end of the day, they're all the same thing: a stick that takes selfies."

Time magazine listed the selfie stick among its 25 best inventions of 2014, while the New York Post called it the most controversial gift of the year.

By late December 2014, Bloomberg News reported that selfie sticks had come to dominate the holiday season as a "must-have" gift.

However, the selfie stick has faced criticism for its perceived association with the narcissism and self-absorption of contemporary society.

Commentators in 2015 also nicknamed it "Narcissistic" or "Wand of Narcissus".