One day in 1839, a man by the name of Robert Cornelius sat for 15 minutes in front of a hand built camera made of opera glass and sheets of copper. His picture became the first “selfie” ever taken.
View Reddit by Exciting_Boat_3907 – View Source
View Reddit by Exciting_Boat_3907 – View Source
He never imagined people of the future accidentally falling down the Grand Canyon or petting a Yellowstone bison just to do the same thing.
And you couldn’t take two minutes to at least run a comb through your hair?
-his mom, probably
Yet another self-important influencer
“Felt cute, might delete it later” – Robert Cornelius
He had the most followers in 1839
His father immigrated from Amsterdam in 1783 and worked as a silversmith before opening a lamp-manufacturing company
Would
Aside from the damage/aging, the picture quality is really excellent for such a primitive technology at that point in time.
Ancestor of Yukon Cornelius
Fascinating too see a guy who lived so long ago
What was his life like? The city? Food he ate? Even what the money looked like?
So many questions
Pretty fascinating he was alive when Napoleon was still around
He looks like Mr Darcy.
He looks like my type. Disheveled. Self-Involved. Curious and pensive. Great hair.
Whenever I see an old photo like this one, it makes me think about all the things that were going on in the world when this particular moment was frozen in time. In 1839:
* Ships still used sail rather than steam to travel.
* Electrical lights were a true rarity.
* The first opium war between China and Britain began.
* Charles Dickens’ third novel, Nicholas Nickleby, is published. In the year before, perhaps his most famous work, Oliver Twist, was published.
* Famous Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp would not be born for another nine years.
* Most of the western part of what was to be come the Wild West belonged to Mexico.
All of this was true in the exact moment this photo was taken. It’s awe inspiring.
And he looked good doing it!
Handsome
Um ok but he’s like, really handsome.
The quality is amazing. Think of him looking at this for the first time. To me it would have seemed like a miracle – almost like the ability to freeze time. I wonder if he imagined the possibilities of this new power.
Dude didn’t blink for 15 minutes.
Respect.
You got this crisp picture from a handmade camera from 1839, and then you got those blurry bigfoot and ufo pictures of 2010-2023
He was so handsome
Handsome dude.
Handsome guy. I love his carelessly tousled hair.
Looks like a Nine Inch Nails album cover
It’s weird, you know people from hundreds of years ago looked just like us, but then you get a nearly 200-year-old picture with some guy in it and it seems somehow wrong that he looks like just another person.
He’s kinda hot
This is the oldest surviving portrait photograph taken in the US. It is very unlikely to be the first portrait or the first selfie. Niépce, Daguerre or Bayard probably beat him to it but didn’t share the works or they were destroyed. Daguerre was so secretative he would only show his work to Royal Academy in his studio.
Bayard gave an exhibit of photographs in the Summer of 1839 so he had been working for some time prior. Cornelius didn’t attempt his selfie until October or November. A few months after Daguerre finally publicly announced his process.
And then there were photographs taken in Brazil in 1832 and 1833 which I am not sure any have survived.
And it didn’t take 15 minutes. The exposure was maybe 3 minutes. Cornelius had plenty of lamps.