Treasure Trove: The Original Selfie Machine Turns 100

The original selfie machine turns 100 this year.

The photo booth made its first appearance in September 1926 on Broadway in New York City. It was the invention of Anatol Josepho (1894-1980, born Josephewitz), and first called the Photomaton.

Siberian born, Josepho became interested in photography at an early age. While running a photo studio in Shanghai in 1921, he produced inexpensive portraits in horizontal strips. Wanting to automate the process and make photographic portraits quickly and cheaply available to everyone, he drew blueprints for the mechanical and chemical components of an automated photo studio and travelled to the United States to find financial backers for his invention (for which he applied for a patent in 1925).

With the help of family and friends in New York City he raised $11,000 (the equivalent of about $200,000 today) and built the prototype in a Harlem loft. When the Photomaton was first operational, it was so popular that in its first six months 280,000 customers paid a quarter to receive their own strip of eight pictures which took only eight minutes to produce. The studio was open until 4 am to accommodate demand which often spilled out of the store in a lineup that ran down the street.

Josepho sold his invention in 1927 for $1 million (worth over $18 million today). He set aside half of this amount for charity with the other half to be used to help struggling inventors. He took a particular interest in the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology in Haifa, given its focus on innovation which was what made Josepho wealthy. In 1971, a building at the Technion supported by Josepho and his wife was dedicated.  That building is now called the Josepho Industrial Research Center.

In 1941, Josepho donated 110 acres of land near Los Angeles to the Boy Scouts of America to thank his adopted country. Camp Josepho operated on that property for more than 80 years until the property was destroyed in 2025 in the Pacific Palisades Fire. The Camp is determined to rebuild and reopen.

Josepho’s legacy also lives on in the continued popularity of the photo booth at weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and corporate events and in public spaces.

Clearly there was a photo booth at Expo 67 in Montreal. In the weekly Treasure Trove column I always include a photograph of one of my treasures. This week is an exception. This photograph is of one of my parents’ treasures.

For more treasures from the Herzl and Zionism Collection of David Matlow, which has appeared weekly in the Treasure Trove column in the Canadian Jewish News (www.thecjn.ca) since February 2021, see https://herzlcollection.com/treasure-trove

Treasure Trove is a program of The Herzl Project.