One of the more annoying tech gadgets over the last decade or so has been the ‘Selfie Stick’, which basically allows you to take half-decent photos of yourself alone or with other people.
Perhaps unsurprisingly when ‘Selfie Sticks’ started becoming popular in 2015/2016; jews immediately claimed that they were a ‘jewish invention’ with Eric Schulmiller writing in the ‘Jewish Daily Forward’ in 2016 that:
‘Selfie stick (2005, Wayne Fromm, Jewish Canadian and longtime promoter of the Toronto-style twisted bagel)’ (1)
This – as you probably know by now if I am writing about it – is complete and utter nonsense as the first patented ‘Selfie Stick’ was actually created by Japanese inventors Ueda Hiroshi and Mima Yujiro in 1983 as US patent US4530580A. (2)
Indeed a ‘Selfie Stick’ was literally featured a decade earlier than Fromm’s ‘invention’ of his version of the ‘Selfie Stick’ in 2005 that he called the ‘Quik Pod’ (3) in a 1995 English language book of ‘Useless Inventions’ by Kenji Kawakami. (4)
For clarity I reproduce the relevant page from Kawakami’s book:
Did Fromm read Kawakami’s English language book and simply create his own version then just happened to ‘get lucky’ so-to-speak?
There is no evidence per se, but it is mightily convenient that Fromm’s 2005 ‘invention’ looks distinctly like Kawakami’s version of the ‘Selfie Stick’ from a decade earlier.
However, the ‘Selfie Stick’ as a concept had long been used with the first known photo taken using a ‘Selfie Stick’ having occurred in Britain in 1925! (5)
So no the jews did not invent the ‘Selfie Stick’: the British and/or the Japanese did!
References
(1) https://forward.com/culture/350489/these-3-jewish-inventions-are-tailor-made-for-celebrating-rosh-hashanah/
(2) https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/011617110/publication/US4530580A?q=pn%3DUS4530580
(3) https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2015/jan/11/meet-the-man-who-invented-the-selfie-stick
(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20150109130439/http://news.distractify.com/alex-scola/but-first/
(5) https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-30550998