The selfie stick has become so common that it has even become harmful. It is now banned in many places such as some museums, stadiums, concert halls… But where does this phenomenon come from? Who is Hiroshi Ueda, the inventor of the selfie stick?
One of the first selfie sticks, perhaps the first, was invented in the 1980s by Japanese Hiroshi Ueda. At the time, he worked for the Minolta camera company and was an enthusiastic photographer. In an interview given to the BBC in 2015, he explains the genesis of the selfie stick.
Every time I went abroad, I took my camera and took loads of pictures.
But while traveling in Europe, he ran into a problem. He liked to take pictures of himself and his wife together – but he was always a little worried about the trustworthiness of the passers-by he asked to take their pictures.
While visiting the Louvre Museum in Paris, I asked a child to take a picture of us. But when I stepped back to get in the picture, the child ran off with my camera.
It was a problem that needed to be solved! As an engineer in Minolta's R&D department, Ueda was the ideal man to find a solution.
So he came up with the idea of the "extending pole" - a pole that could extend and had a mount that could be used with a new, small camera. He added a mirror to the front of the camera so the photographer could see exactly what he was taking a picture of.
Hiroshi and his family photographed using his extendable pole
The idea behind this invention was that I no longer had to trust a stranger to take a picture. I could take a picture of myself anywhere, anytime.
But the concept had trouble taking hold. Minolta's testing department realized that some people, especially women, were uncomfortable with the idea of taking pictures of themselves.
Despite this, Minolta adopted the concept, because it was considered "fantastic". The extender was patented in 1983, but it did not meet with the expected commercial success. One of the reasons was the poor quality of the photos taken with the device.
Nevertheless, Ueda kept faith in his invention.
I use it all the time. Even 30 years ago, when the product was discontinued, I always carried a pocket camera with an extendable pole. It's like an extension of my arm. When I want to extend it, I pull it out, and when I'm walking around, I fold it back.
Hiroshi Ueda with his extendable pole
Ueda's patent expired in 2003… nearly a decade before the selfie stick boom. But he remained philosophical about the failed act:
My idea came too early. But it's just one of many ideas. I've patented about 300 ideas… this was just one of them. It came too early.
But the story of the selfie stick doesn't end there.
In the early 2000s, Canadian gadget inventor Wayne Fromm developed the Quik Pod, an extendable selfie stick. He had never heard of Ueda's invention but came up with the idea while on vacation in Europe.
We had to constantly find strangers who would agree to take our picture. We would sit there and wait, hoping that someone would speak English… And that’s when the idea came to me – what if the camera could be suspended in the air as if someone were taking our picture?
Wayne and his daughter with her Quik Pod
When he returned from vacation, he began to take an interest in the mechanisms of umbrellas to try to realize his idea before arriving at the selfie stick as we know it.
For 10 years, he visited fairs, exhibitions and teleshopping channels to promote his invention.
Then finally, success finally arrived… undoubtedly helped by the emergence of smartphones equipped with ever more powerful cameras. But the concept quickly fell victim to its success. Despite a patent application, Fromm's selfie stick is so imitated that it is impossible for him to prosecute all the counterfeiters.
It's like ants on a picnic: you can't crush them all. The product has gone viral and it would be a waste of energy to try to fight that kind of fight.
Like Ueda, he remained philosophical, believing that as an inventor, it is not only money that counts, but the satisfaction of having created something useful.
In short, would you have imagined that the selfie stick had been around for almost 35 years and that we had to wait for the emergence of smartphones for the concept to explode?
