Taking pictures of yourself and sharing them with the world is a very popular trend today, but the practice actually goes back centuries, starting from the early 1800s.

Let’s get to know the history of the selfie—or photographic self-portrait—and how it evolved into its current form, using smartphones instead of cameras.

The First Selfies in History

There's a lot of debate regarding who took the first selfie ever, but Robert Cornelius is in the Guinness World Records as the prime candidate. He used the daguerreotype technique in 1839 in his family’s lamp and chandelier shop to capture his own face.

He then wrote on the back:

The first light picture ever taken. 1839.

The next famous selfie from an age before smartphones was Joseph Byron’s. In 1909, he stood on the roof of his company Marceau Studio and photographed himself with a box camera, potentially a Kodak.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna used a Kodak Brownie in 1914 for her historic selfie. She also used a mirror, a popular way to take self-portraits even back then.

1920 saw Byron return to that same rooftop with his executives and two cameras, one to take the first group selfie in history, the other to capture how that photo came to be, namely with Byron and his friend Ben Falk holding up the bulky device from either side.

The History of the Modern Selfie

An Australian nicknamed Hopey coined the term selfie in 2002 when he posted a picture of his split lip on an ABC forum and explained that he’d tripped on a flight of stairs while intoxicated. The post continued:

And sorry about the focus, it was a selfie.

This was the first time the word was ever used, and it certainly made an impression. More and more people would take pictures of themselves, either straight through the camera or using a mirror, and share them online, referring to them as selfies.

Celebrities, astronauts, presidents, and even Pope Francis joined the bandwagon. Platforms like Facebook, MySpace, and Tumblr boosted the trend further with their social features and the introduction of hashtags.

The selfie was here to stay, and dictionaries acknowledged it in 2013. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries still defines it as:

A photo of yourself that you take, typically with a smartphone or webcam, and usually put on social media.

Smartphones, digital cameras, and the internet separate modern selfies from their older counterparts, but the essence is the same. It’s a history of people immortalizing themselves through photography.

What Key Technologies Created the Modern Selfie?

Today, you can just tap a few icons and snap your picture, all done in under a minute. A lot of innovation went into this achievement, each technology linking into the next to make self-portrait photographs easier and more fun to take.

Portable Cameras

The first cameras in history were big boxes with single lenses that projected scenes from outside onto plates and then film. Their technology evolved fast since 1816 when Nicéphore Niépce began working with photographs and passed his passion on to Louis Daguerre.

Devices like the daguerreotype and calotype emerged, but their size and weight were still a problem. It was 1888 when George Eastman introduced the Kodak, a portable camera that used rolls of paper film.

Kodak Brownie Portable Camera

Cameras kept getting smaller and handier, bringing in single-lens reflex (SLR), auto-focus, and color technology. The Polaroid was especially popular because the device developed your photos on the go as opposed to doing it yourself or sending the film elsewhere.

Self-Timers

Until self-timers were built into cameras, and unless you got creative with sticks, someone always had to be pressing the button to snap a photo.

Self-timer technology changed that, enabling the photographer to join the shot. Cameras became hands-free for a few seconds at a time, making selfies that much more convenient and paving the way for more luxuries.

Telecoms

Smartphones would never have emerged without Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in 1876 or the world's first cell phones launching in the 1980s, not to mention the phone networks that allowed communication between such devices.

While normal cameras would still have been available for self-portraits, the modern selfie may never have involved telephones. So, it's worth appreciating all groundbreaking firsts in mobile phone history.

The Internet

The idea of connected computers flourished in the late 1900s into the ARPANET, which laid the foundation for the internet, linking more and more networks around the globe and enriching them with tools like email and the World Wide Web.

By 1995, the internet was officially recognized and commercialized, opening the way to further innovation that would make it all the more useful.

Cables Connected to White Switch Hub for Internet

That’s how services like social media, online chatting, and image uploads reached their current potential, letting you post your selfies on Instagram and interact with other users.

Camera Phones

Kyocera’s VP210, launched in 1999, is considered the first camera phone in history, featuring a 0.11mp camera that could take and email 20 pictures.

Thanks to companies like Samsung, Sharp, and Nokia, the technology quickly transformed over the following years to push the boundaries of camera capabilities within the limited space of mobile phones.

Without that rush to perfection, you wouldn’t have access to the best camera phones of today with 6.7-inch displays, up to 64mp cameras, 4K definition, object tracking, and more.

Photography Software

Today, we have programs like Photoshop and GIMP to edit photos, but even they are products of past practices, starting in 1846 when Calvert Richard Jones snapped a shot of five monks and painted over one of them with Indian ink.

For decades after, photo editing was a matter of meticulous painting and collage making. Altering a picture naturally is no less complicated with modern digital tools, but smartphones can get simplified versions as dedicated apps or social media features.

Camera, editing, and networking software created the selfie culture, but filters were the real game changer. Snapchat lenses began the craze in 2015, inspiring other platforms to follow suit and keep enhancing their photographic side.

With each filter innovation, selfies and other photo opportunities have become more fun and user-friendly. Just look at how TikTok’s text-to-image AI filter works.

Selfie Gadgets

Tripods have been used throughout history for various reasons, so when cameras were invented, these three-legged contraptions found a new purpose.

It’s no surprise then that you can get a tripod for your smartphone, too. That and your camera phone’s timer enable you to take pictures of yourself and your friends from a distance, for example.

The selfie stick is another gadget that defined smartphone self-portraits. It was actually first invented in the 1980s by Hiroshi Ueda, who just wanted to take pictures with his camera without having to ask passersby.

It was in 2004 when another traveler, Wayne Fromm, created his own selfie stick for the same reasons and called it the Quik Pod. As camera phones became more popular, so did this type of gadget, much to the benefit of selfie lovers and the annoyance of everyone else.

But handy selfie technology reached new heights with the invention of drones designed just for taking pictures of their owners. In 2016, Simon Kantor introduced the world to the first selfie drone ever and greater photo opportunities.

Today, buying Snap’s Pixy drone gets you a flying camera that can follow or revolve around you for some incredible shots. You don’t even need to have your phone out, which is only necessary for storing your image files, ready to edit and share later on Snapchat.

The Selfie Has a Rich and Positive History

There is negativity surrounding selfies, but their positive aspects are important, too. Clearly, the history and evolution of the selfie is a long and fascinating one, combining human ingenuity with a desire to self-express and capture important moments.

The selfie has also become one of the fastest ways to share news and connect with others. Not only that, but it’s stretching inventors’ minds toward bigger and better technologies. Lots of perks to go around.