By Tyler Zuk
Contributing Writer
As a new semester is unraveling here on the campus of ESU, so is the beginning of a new year.
Yes, it is hard to believe that it is already 2016!
We are now more than halfway through the 2010’s decade, and the decades hottest trends have spit full fire amongst today’s hottest popular culture.
Today’s article is focusing on one of the hottest holiday items from the 2015-2016 shopping season, the Selfie Stick.
Although it is hard to imagine a college student who is not familiar with the selfie stick, one could assume that most individuals of all ages are not familiar with the history of the selfie stick or where it came about.
Although they seem relatively new to today’s society, selfie sticks can be traced back too almost an entire century ago.
It began in the year 1925, when a man tied his Polaroid camera to stick, and took a picture with his wife.
More than half of a century later in 1983, the “Minolta Disc-7” camera was released which was among the first cameras that had a convex mirror which one could use for self-reflected portraits.
Within the contents of the camera packaging included a pictured diagram on the box representing a small stand, which was used to perch the camera upward from the underneath position.
A little bit more than a decade later, the first Japanese selfie stick was released in 1995, thus beginning the start of selfie stick marketing.
However, unlike today, any cell phones that existed in the mid-1990s most certainly did not have a camera, thus permitting only the use of digital and disposable cameras of the time period.
Finally, in 2005, Canadian entrepreneur Wayne Fromm releases his Quick Pod, an extendable stick that could clamp against your phone to take a self-reflected picture.
With this release, as well as a rising market in apple products, the Quick Pod became available all throughout North America, and in 2014, the term selfie stick was finally coined, and is among today’s most prized smart technology innovations.
So yes, the selfie stick is a huge hit.
Whether you are in the middle of suburban Iowa, or near a New York subway station, you just might happen to see a group of people huddling together for a selfie with their prized selfie stick.
It does not matter who you are, what you like, or where you come from, anybody and everybody can own one!
So get together your closest pals, huddle up, and take a selfie! Say Cheese!
Email Tyler at:
tzuk@live.esu.edu