Box clever: a camera made for the masses

In 1900 a small cardboard box changed the way we think about – and experience – travel forever. In truth, it was a little more than a box. It had a small glass lens, a lever which operated a single-speed shutter, and a spool to hold photographic film. But it was simple enough that it could be sold for a dollar in the US and a few shillings in Britain.

Despite – or perhaps because of – this, the Eastman Kodak Box Brownie camera was arguably the greatest technological breakthrough in the history of photography: the world’s first affordable and easily portable camera.

Kodak had produced a portable camera 12 years earlier in 1888. But it wasn’t very user friendly. It was supplied preloaded with enough film to take 100 exposures, but when you had used that up, you had to send the whole thing back to Kodak to be developed. It was also very expensive – at $25 it was the equivalent of nearly two months’ wages for an American nurse. By contrast, the Brownie could be loaded and unloaded by the user, and a roll of film – including the processing – cost a dollar.

In fact, both camera and film were so cheap and so simple to use that the Brownie was initially aimed at children. The name derives from popular impish cartoon characters of the time (though it is also a pun on the designer’s name, Frank A Brownell). But it proved so popular with adults that Kodak sold more than 150,000 cameras in the first year of production, and the improved Brownie No2, which was introduced in 1901, was still in production until 1935. Millions were sold all around the world.

Sure, there were limitations with early models. The viewfinder (you looked down from above the camera) was basic, there was no way to focus, and the slow shutter speed (about 1/25th second) meant that blurring was common. And, of course – until 1936, when Kodak and Agfa introduced colour film – all photographs were in black and white. But at least the tripod and photographer’s cloak could be done away with and suddenly your holiday memories could be distilled and preserved on the spot. A century before the iPhone and Instagram, you could already show off to your friends and neighbours, compose a visual diary of your travels, even create heirlooms. Rather wonderfully, I still have my

grandparents’ honeymoon shots taken in Scotland on a Box Brownie in 1938.

The Brownie brand went on to become the most enduring in photographic history. Flashes, focussing and variable shutter speeds were added in different ways and at different times. In all, the name was attached to nearly 100 different types of camera and the last Brownies were still being produced in Brazil in 1986 – two years before Fuji introduced the first fully digital camera (the FUJIX DS-1P), and 21 years before the introduction of the first iPhone.

You will have your own views on whether or not we now take too many photographs, and whether too many of us are obsessed with experiencing life through a lens. But if you are looking for the root cause of it all, you need go no further than the very first Brownie in 1900. That was the start of the revolution.

Box Brownies are still widely available on the second-hand market. As I wrote this, a No2 version sold on eBay for £5.50. But you can see one of the first to be made – along with many other historic camera models – at the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York (eastman.org)

The Brownie No2 was produced until 1935, when this image was taken