Kodak Brownie Flash III Camera

Kodak Brownie Flash III box roll-film camera.

Kodak Brownie cameras were some of the earliest affordable and easy to use cameras.

Although photography was invented in the first half of the 19th century, it was a complicated and expensive activity at first. In 1900, the American Kodak company introduced the Brownie, a cheap and simple box camera. The Brownie put photography into the hands of millions of everyday people for the first time, allowing them to easily take snapshots of their daily lives and their families and friends. The name is thought to have been a reference to cartoons of Brownies, a type of folklore spirit, in children’s books by Palmer Cox.

The Brownie was a huge success, with over 100,000 sold in the first year of production. They were followed by millions of improved Brownie branded cameras made over the following decades, which were manufactured in several countries, including Britain. Over the years Kodak produced many different models of Brownie, adding new features and using new materials. Although later model Brownies were quite different to the first ones, they continued to be quite simple cameras, affordable, and marketed to amateur photographers.

This is a Brownie Flash III, made in the UK between 1957 and 1960. It still retains the classic box camera shape of earlier Brownies, but has many improvements – a sturdier metal body, a close-up lens as well as the standard one, and the option to attach a flash bulb to the side.