The World's First Selfie: Who Took it?

Credits: The Economic Times

Taking a selfie has now become commonplace wherever you are, from restaurants to castles. People take selfies while doing (nearly) any and everything. These days, there is no awkwardness attached to taking a selfie in public, and with the rise in the number of filters, it has become a common activity to pass time in private too.

The first-ever 'selfie' was taken in 1839.  The self-portrait was taken by Robert Cornelius who was an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast from Philadelphia. Cornelius took a picture of himself in the back of his family's chandelier store. He set up the camera and then ran into the frame for the picture, thus having clicked the first-ever 'selfie'.

However, the word ‘selfie’ was only founded in 2002, when an Australian man, Nathan Hope, got drunk at his 21st birthday and posted a picture of his stitched lip with the caption “sorry about the focus, it was a selfie”.

And then, there was no looking back.

Between 2003 and 2005, more than a century after the first selfie, the trend evolved into its modern version, growing bigger with people posting these photos on the social networking site MySpace.

In 2013, the Oxford Dictionaries announced their word of the year to be “selfie”, which they define as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.” 

Now, with the rise of social media and new technology, selfies have become an everyday affair. Whether it was Ellen DeGeneres's viral Oscar selfie or PM Modi's many selfies, this trend transcends age, industry, and boundaries.