How many of you have Instagram accounts filled with your selfies?
All of them of toilet mirror selfies, selfies in front of tourist attractions, selfies/wefies with your squad, etc. etc.
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But how many of you actually know who invented the selfie?
I can already hear some of your know-it-alls pointing out everyone’s favourite bumbling fool, Mr Bean.
And with good reason too, considering how many times Mr Bean had taken selfies with his ancient 1990s camera, also with tourist attractions like the famous British Queen’s Guard.
He took selfies before it was cool, yo.
Honestly, though, the biggest reason why he began taking pictures by himself is probably because he has no friends and is literally an alien.
Unfortunately, you would be quite wrong if you think Mr Bean was the first person to ever take a selfie. He might be the one who started the trend and popularized it through pop culture, but he was far from the first person to do it.
Selfies have actually been around for about as long as cameras have been around.
Back in goddamn 1839, also known as the year the first publicly available photographic process was invented, an American pioneer in photography took what was probably the first selfie in human history.
Known as a daguerreotype, the first ever photographic process involved exposing a silver-plated copper sheet treated with fumes in a camera.
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The fumes made the sheet light-sensitive, and an image would then be recorded. The sheet is then treated with more chemicals, and you’re probably dying from boredom right now.
Anyway, Robert Cornelius, the aforementioned American photography pioneer, took a daguerreotype of himself the same year the technology was invented.
Back then, the process was so slow he could uncover the lens, run out to stand in front of the camera for a minute or so, then run back to cover the lens.
It was also one of the first photographs of a person ever taken.
So don’t think selfies are a modern invention with the advent of increasingly powerful front-facing smartphone cameras. Literally back when photography itself was first invented, there were selfies already.
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In fact, the first mirror selfie taken by a teenager, wasn’t even in the same century as us.
Back in 1914, 13-year-old Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia took a photographic self-portraiture in a mirror with a Kodak Brownie box camera, one of the first portable cameras ever made. She then sent it to a friend in a letter.
Oh yeah, teenagers taking selfies, then sharing with their friends is not a new thing at all.
The more you know, eh?
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