Instamatic turns 50

My parents bought me one about '65 or '66 for about $12. I stopped using it about 30 years ago when I got into more serious photography. I took it apart a few years back and the lens was a dime-sized, plastic, single element, uncoated lens. No wonder the pictures were fuzzy with low contrast and flare. But despite this, the general snapshooting public (which I was one of once), not knowing any better or caring, bought millions and millions of them.

There had been all kind of type 126 cameras ranging from single-element, most basic cameras up to multi-element lenses in SLR-bodies. Kodak themselves offered a type 126 SLR.