A lamp maker from Philadelphia sat motionless for 15 minutes in front of a homemade camera built with opera glass and copper in 1839; his picture became the first ‘selfie’ ever taken

Before selfies became a quick part of everyday life, taking a picture of yourself was an exercise in endurance. There was no smartphone, no front-facing camera and certainly no instant preview. In 1839, a lamp maker from Philadelphia, Robert Cornelius, had to position himself in front of an early camera and remain still for several minutes. That painstaking experiment would eventually become one of photography's most famous firsts.

Who was Robert Cornelius?

Cornelius worked in his father's lamp-making business and had been trained in silver plating and metal work. His technical experience became useful when photography was still in its earliest stages.


His interest in the new technology grew after watchmaker and inventor Joseph Saxton asked him to help prepare materials for a daguerreotype. The process, recently developed in France, could create highly detailed and relatively long-lasting photographic images, but it was far more complicated than taking a picture with a modern camera.

Cornelius prepared silver-coated copper plates for Saxton, who is believed to have taken the oldest surviving photograph in the United States, a grainy image showing Philadelphia's Central High School and the Pennsylvania State Arsenal.

The experience appears to have encouraged Cornelius to experiment with photography himself.

Cornelius did more than create an early photographic self-portrait. He went on to become an important figure in the development of photography in the United States.

He opened one of the country's first photographic studios, helping establish photography as a commercial practice while the technology was still developing.

His self-portrait is now held by the Library of Congress, preserving an image created nearly two centuries ago when photography was still an experimental technology.

How the first selfie was taken in 1839

Cornelius who was 30 at that time, constructed a camera using materials including an opera glass and sheets of copper. He then positioned it in the backyard of his family's business in Philadelphia.

The exposure required far more time than today's instant photography. Cornelius had to remove the lens cap, move into position and remain still while the image was being recorded, then return to cover the lens.

The exposure time could have ranged from three to 15 minutes, depending on the amount of available light.

“He set up his makeshift camera outside his parents’ shop, and he stood there in complete stillness for five minutes, 15 minutes,” said Johanna Dunphy, the artistic director of Historic Philadelphia, Inc., to Billy Penn.

“He did not have all the proper equipment, so he fashioned it himself,” Dunphy said. “He made the camera out of a tin box and opera glasses.”

The resulting daguerreotype showed Cornelius looking directly toward the camera, with his body slightly turned and his expression serious. On the back, he wrote: “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839,” the Guinness World Records on his discovery notes.

The image was produced using the daguerreotype process, which involved an iodine-sensitized silver-coated plate and mercury vapor. The process was capable of producing remarkably detailed images, but it also required handling hazardous chemicals, including bromine and mercury.

Why daguerreotypes changed photography

Before photography became practical, preserving someone's appearance depended largely on paintings, drawings or memory.

That changed with the emergence of the daguerreotype. “Before this time, it was impossible to know someone’s true appearance unless you met them in person,” Smithsonian Magazine’s Ryan P. Smith wrote in 2018. “You could not look back on the faces of your children once they reached adulthood, nor those of your late parents once they were laid to rest… Daguerreotypes gave the American people the ability to preserve not merely imagine their collective history.”

For Cornelius, the technology offered another possibility: photographing himself.

His experiment came at a time when photographers often became their own subjects. Early photographic equipment was cumbersome, exposures were lengthy and producing an image required considerable preparation. Acting as the model was sometimes simply the easiest way for an experimenter to test a new process.

From a 15-minute exposure to an instant selfie

The word “selfie” itself is modern. In 2013, the Oxford Dictionaries selected “selfie” as its Word of the Year and defined it as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.”

The technology behind today's selfie could hardly be further removed from Cornelius' experiment. A smartphone can capture a self-portrait almost instantly, while Cornelius had to build his equipment, prepare the photographic plate and sit motionless for several minutes.

Yet the basic idea remains similar. A person stands in front of a camera and deliberately records their own image.

In that sense, the modern selfie has a history stretching back to a Philadelphia backyard in 1839, where a lamp maker decided to become his own photographic subject. His patience produced an image that would eventually be remembered as the first selfie.