Photos: DYK: The selfie stick is NOT a new invention

It may be the must-have smartphone accessory this year.

But a photo has emerged that shows the 'selfie stick' is not an entirely new invention and is in fact almost 90 years old.

Selfie stick today.

An image, taken of a couple in 1926, shows Arnold and Helen Hogg using a stick to take a picture of themselves on the street they lived in in Rugby, Warwickshire, just a year after they were married.

The photograph, annotated with the words 'Self Taken, Oct 1926' is evidence that people were using selfie sticks to capture images of themselves long before the phenomenon was made popular this year by celebrities.

The picture is only two inches wide and was found stuck in the back of a family album by the Hoggs’ grandson Alan Cleaver, of Whitehaven in Cumbria. It features the couple and shows the stick visible and being held by Mr Hogg.

'In our family it's always been a favourite photo and the fact that there is so much interest in it now would have been loved by granddad,' said Mr Cleaver. 

Selfie stick 88 years ago!