(아름다운 인생) 어떻게 셀카봉은 두 번 씩이나 발명되었는가?

출처: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32336808

19 April 2015

How the selfie stick was invented twice 어떻게 셀카봉은 두 번 씩이나 발명되었는가?

By Vibeke VenemaBBC World Service

The selfie stick was invented twice, two decades apart, by men on opposite sides of the world - and both times it was the result of problems experienced on a European holiday. 셀카봉은 지구의 반대편 사람들에 의해 20년 간격으로 두 번이나 발명되었는데, 두 번다 유럽역사에서 경험한 문제의 결과였다.

The selfie stick has become so common that it is now widely seen as a nuisance - it has been banned from stadiums, concerts, museums and even from the next Apple conference. 셀카봉은 이제 너무나 흔한 물건이 되어 마침내 애물단지처럼 보인다. 운동장이나 콘서트장이나 박물관 심지어 곧 개최될 애플社의 컨퍼런스에서 사용금지 품목이 되었다.

And yet it was once considered so unnecessary that it was included in the book of 101 Un-Useless Japanese Inventions - along with dust slippers for cats and the hydrophobe's bath body suit (for taking a bath without getting wet). 이 셀카봉은 과거 한 때 전혀 쓸모가 없는 물건으로 간주되어, 고양이를 위한 먼지실내화와  恐水病(물을 무서워하는 병)환자를 위한 목욕옷(물에 젖지 않고 목욕하기 위한)과 더불어 101가지 불필요한 일본인 발명품 책자에 포함되었던 적이 있다

Un-useless inventions, also known as chindogu, are the brainchild of Kenji Kawakami, who defines them as things that are almost completely useless, but not quite. "If you invent something which turns out to be so handy that you use it all the time, then you have failed to make a chindogu. Try the Patent Office," says the website chindogu.com. "친도구"라고 불리는 쓸모 없는 발명들은 켄지 카와카미의 아이디어(발명품)이다. 그는 이 발명품들을 거의 쓸모 없는 것들로 간주하지만, 꼭 그렇지는 않다. "당신이 어떤 걸 발명했는데 그것이 너무 편리해서 항상 그걸 사용한다면, 당신은 친도구를 만든 게 아니다. 특허 사무소를 시험해보세요"라고 친도구의 웹사이트는 말한다.

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An early selfie stick, perhaps the first, was invented in the 1980s by Hiroshi Ueda. At the time he worked for the Minolta camera company, and was a keen photographer. "Whenever I went overseas I took my camera with me and took loads of photos," he says. 세계 최초로 셀카봉을 발명한 것은 1980년대 히로시 우에다라는 사람이었다. 그 당시 그는 미놀타 카메라 회사에서 일할 때였는데, 예리한 사진가였다. "내가 해외 출장을 갈 때마다 카메라를 가져가 많은 사진들을 찍어왔다."고 그는 말한다. 

But while travelling in Europe he encountered a problem. He was keen to get pictures of himself and his wife together - but passers-by couldn't always be trusted. 그런데 그가 유럽을 여행할 때 한 가지 문제에 맞닥뜨렸다. 그는 자신과 아내를 같이 찍어싶었으나 행인들을 신뢰할 수 없다는 게 문제였다.

"When I was in the Louvre Museum in Paris, I asked a child to take a photo of us, but when I stepped away, the child ran away with my camera," he says. "내가 파리 루브르 박물관에서 한 아이에게 우리 사진을 찍어달라고 했는데, 우리가 몇 발짝 옴기는 순간 그 아이가 내 카메라를 갖고 도망간 거예요." 라고 그는 말한다.

It was a problem crying out for a solution - and as an engineer in Minolta's development department, Ueda was well-placed to find one. 해결책을 찾는 것이 문제였으니, 미놀타 카메라의 개발부 엔지니어인 우에다는 적합한 부서에 있었던 것이다.

He came up with the "extender stick" - an extendable stick with a tripod screw that was designed for use with a new, small, camera. He added a mirror to the front of the camera so that photographers could see exactly what they were doing. 그는 新小形 카메라용으로 제작된  삼각대 나사가 장착된 "확장 가능한 막대기"를 고안했다. 그는 여기에다 사진 찍는 사람이 정확히 대상을 알아볼 수 있도록 카메라 전방에 거울을 달았다.

Hiroshi Ueda captures his family on holiday using his invention, the extender stick 히로시 우에다가 자신의 발명품 확장 막대기를 사용하여 쉬는 날 가족들과 함께 사진을 찍었다

"The philosophy behind it was that I didn't need to rely on anyone else to take a photo - I could take a picture of myself whenever and wherever I liked," says Ueda. "이 발명품 속에 담긴 철학은 사진 찍으려고 남에게 의존할 필요가 없다. 언제든지 어디든지 내가 원하면 내 모습을 내가 찍을 수 있다는 것이다."라고 우에다는 말한다.

The concept encountered some resistance - Minolta's testing department found that women in particular were very embarrassed by the idea of taking photos of themselves. "The idea of taking a picture of yourself was very new back then," says Ueda. 그러나 이런 생각은 환영을 받지 못했으니, 미놀타의 시험부는 특별히 여성들이 자신을 찍는다는 생각에 무척 당혹해 한다고 여겼던 것이다.

Nonetheless, Minolta went ahead with it, he says, "because the idea was fantastic". 그럼에도 불구하고, 미놀타는 이 아이디어를 밀어부쳤다. "왜냐하면 아이디어가 멋졌기 때문이다."고 그는 말한다.

The extender was patented in 1983 but, to Ueda's disappointment, it was not a commercial success. 확장 막대기는 1983년 특허를 받았다. 그러나 우에다에게 실망스럽게도, 이 제품은 상업적으로 성공을 거두지 못했다.

"It didn't sell very well," he admits. "The quality of the picture wasn't very good." "이 제품은 잘 팔리지 않았어요."라고 그는 시인했다. "(확장 막대기 때문에) 사진의 질이 썩 좋지 않았거든요."

Nevertheless, he kept faith with his invention. "I use it all the time. Even 30 years ago, when the product stopped selling, I always, always carried a pocket camera and extender stick with me," he says. "It's like an extension of my arm. Whenever I want to extend it, I pull it out, and whenever I'm just walking around, I fold it up." 그럼에도 불구하고, 그는 자신의 발명품에 대한 신뢰를 아끼지 않았다. " 나는 이걸 늘 사용하다. 비록 30년 전 이 제품이 판매 중지 되었을지라도, 나는 항상 포켓 카메라와 확장 막대기를 지니고 다녔다."고 그는 말한다. "이것은 내 팔의 확장과 같아요. 내가 팔을 펼쳐할 경우마다 펼치고, 걸을 때는 접습니다."고 그는 말한다.

Hiroshi Ueda with his extender stick 확장 막대기를 잡고 있는 히로시 우에다

Ueda's patent ran out in 2003, at least a decade before the recent boom in selfie sticks, but he's philosophical about this. 우에다의 특허는 최근에 셀카봉이 인기를 끌기 10년 전 2003년 말료되었으나, 그는 이것에 대해 달관한듯 하다.

"My idea came too early, but that's just one of those things. I patented about 300 ideas, so that was just one of them. We call it a 3am invention - it arrived too early." "내 아이디어가 너무 일찍 세상에 나왔어요. 그러나 이것은 많은 것 중 하나일 뿐이에요. 나는 300가지 아이템의 특허를 출원했어요. 그 중에 하나일 뿐이죠. 우리는 이걸 새벽3시 발명품이라 말하죠. 너무 일찍 세상에 나왔기 때문이죠."

Michael Pritchard, Director-General of The Royal Photographic Society, who has studied selfies going back as far as the 1840s, says the quest to include the photographer in a group photo is nothing new. one of the best-known devices to facilitate that was of course the camera self-timer. This relied on using a tripod or finding a suitable surface to rest the camera, and running to join the group. With variable results. 1840년대까지도 거슬러 올라가는 셀카를 연구했던 왕립사진학회의 회장, 마이클 프릿차드는 그룹포토 속에 찍는 사람을 포함시킨다는 발상이 참신한 건 아니다고 말한다. 그렇게 할 수 있는 장치 중 가장 널리 알려진 것이 바로 카메라에 장착된 셀프 타이머이다. 삼각대를 쓰거나 카메라를 적당한 표면에 올려놓고 그룹으로 달려가면 찍히는 방식이다. 그러나 결과에는 늘 변수가 있을 수 있는 단점이 있다.

Will he make it? The trouble with self-timers

Pritchard believes the selfie stick's time has come partly because of optical developments which make lenses work better at short distances. Another factor is the portability of mobile phone cameras - traditional cameras were simply too heavy to put on the end of a long pole.

But the Canadian toy and gadget inventor Wayne Fromm believes there's just one reason the selfie stick has become so popular: his own hard work.

He developed the Quik Pod, a hand-held extendable selfie stick in the early 2000s. He was unaware of Ueda's earlier design, though he too came up with the idea during a European holiday.

"We were constantly having to scope strangers who might be amenable to taking our picture," he says, recalling the trip with his daughter, Sage. "You're sitting there waiting, hoping they speak English…That's when I had the idea - what if this camera could be suspended in the air, as if somebody was taking the picture for us?"

Wayne Fromm and his daughter Sage with his invention, the Quik Pod

On their return, he began researching umbrella technology. "I would buy umbrellas and take them apart - my daughter would come downstairs and see me study 20 different umbrellas, so she probably thought I was a little bit crazy," he says.

Aimed at the adventurous traveller, Fromm's product is impervious to sand and water and has all sorts of extras, like quick-release heads - to avoid the indignity of answering calls with the selfie stick still attached.

The trouble with selfie sticks: receiving a call mid-pose

He's spent the past decade promoting his invention at trade fairs, on the QVC shopping channel and on TV shows like Dragon's Den. "It was a 10-year 'overnight' success," he says.

Fromm disclosed Ueda's extender in his patent as "prior art", but he believes the current selfie stick craze is a direct result of his own model. "It happened because of my work, and I can show a paper trail of that. There's lots of knock-offs of my product that actually have my daughter's picture on the packaging. The factories have been studying my product all of these years, basically stealing the photos as well," he says.

"This is why I say I invented what we call today's selfie stick."

Fromm's product, unlike Ueda's, has sold well, but there are plenty of others profiting from it too, by producing cheap knock-offs. So many, in fact, that it is impossible to pursue them all.

"It's like ants at a picnic: you can't step on them all. It basically went viral and it would be a waste of my emotional energy to start fighting the world over this sort of thing," he says.

Besides, says Fromm, for inventors like him and Ueda it's not all about the money. "It's that you're actually creating something fun or useful or helpful for people. So I'm happy that the world has embraced the selfie stick."

But has anything been lost? What about that brief interaction between strangers, the kind exchange of a favour? Fromm doesn't miss it. once you break silence with strangers," he says, "they feel they have the right to continue to talk to you."

Chindogu

It was while scanning mail-order catalogues that Kenji Kawakami came up with the idea of chindogu - Japanese for "strange tools". He has thought up hundreds of bizarre and absurd items such as funnel glasses (to guide eye drops) or the train nap cap (to avoid head-lolling while asleep on public transport).

Kenji Kawakami with his funnel glasses

The International Chindogu Society also keeps an eye out for unlikely inventions that are a reality - like the suitcase scooter.

Chinese farmer He Liangcai riding his motorised scooter suitcase - it can travel up to 12.5mph