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With the introduction of the first Brownie camera in 1900, the final ingredient in the marketing of mass photography fell into place: that is, photography’s affordability to unprecedented numbers of middle and working class people. Priced at $1.00 per camera plus $0.15 for the six exposure roll, the Brownie sold some 100,000 units in the United States andBritain during its first year on themarket. While Kodak, from the 1890s to the end of the

twentieth century, dominated family photography, it was not entirely free of competition. Its chief American rival was the long established Anthony & Scovill Company (Ansco after 1907) that introduced its own roll film camera in 1905-for which it was promptly sued by Kodak for patent infringement. In Britain, Ilford Ltd., from the mid-1890s, the most successful manufacturer of gelatin dry plates outside the United States, turned to the production of cameras and, in 1912, roll film. The German corporation, Agfa (The Analine Manufacturing Corporation), a commercial dye manufacturer, began producing film in 1908 and cameras in 1928. In Japan, the Cherry portable camera was first manufactured in 1903 by Knoishi Honten, the forerunner of the Konica Corporation.i

These, like the majority of large photography companies in the twentieth century, would continue to follow Kodak’s lead in developing point-andshoot cameras as well as the film stocks and industrial processing facilities to support them. Kodak produced 125 models of the Brownie camera between 1900 and 1970. While some of these went so far as to offer bellows lens mounts, stereo exposures and, later in the century, flash attachments, Kodak never lost sight of the parameters of need and accessibility with which the original model was designed. Even as the company diversified, it was careful to maintain its dominance of the family photography market. In 1963, with the introduction of the Instamatic line, Kodak once again emphasized simplicity of use, selling more than 50 million units prior to 1970. The Instamatic was typical of second generation

point-and-shoot cameras in that it incorporated artificial illumination and was designed to use color film. Flashbulbs, first marketed in 1930, were commonplace in home photography in the post-World War II period with 400 million sold in 1951 alone. The Instamatic generation brought an even more practical means for low light photography through the integration of permanent flash units. Home use of color film had become practical, though expensive, with the Kodachrome and Agfacolor stocks introduced in 1936. It wasn’t until after the Second World War with the coming of Kodacolor, Ansco-

color, Ektachrome, and Fuji-color that color film not only worked well in point-and-shoot cameras but could be processed at competitive prices. By the mid-1960s color had overtaken black and white as a standard for family photography, a trend that continued with the subsequent introduction of everfaster color stocks. Other innovations in second generation point-

and-shoot cameras owed their origin to the redesign and popularization of 35 mm photography by a number of Japanese companies beginning in the mid-1950s. The Japanese researchers used 35 mm as the platform on which features such as the single lens reflex optics, automatic exposure control, automatic focusing, motorized zoom lenses, and motorized film advance were adapted for general use-including, by the 1960s, use in less expensive family formats.ii By the 1980s, cartridge-loaded 35 mm cameras with these features were being sold to family photographers as slightly upscale versions of point-and-shoot cameras. Other alternatives to the basic family camera

proved less successful. The Polaroid Land camera, with its self-developing film, was introduced in 1947. The first Polaroids were relatively expensive, complicated, and produced prints that compared badly to those of conventional cameras. Polaroid improved its technology, introducing color with its Swinger camera in 1962. Its 1972 SX-70 system provided an integrated electronic flash, simplified focusing, and multi-exposure film packs. In the 1990s, Polaroid introduced smaller, less expensive cameras aimed at a youth market. It also emphasized the visual record keeping function of its technology. However, Polaroid’s family photography division suffered from the spread of one-hour photo processing labs in the 1970s, disposable cameras in the 1980s, and digital photography in the last decade of the century. Towards the end of the twentieth century, these

last two innovations looked to both the past and the future in their contributions to the reinvention of family photography. Fuji’s ‘‘utsurundesu’’ (film with lens), the single use (or disposable) camera, introduced in 1986, reiterated Kodak’s 1888 idea of returning the camera to the processor along with its film. These small cardboard box cameras, only marginally more expensive than the roll of color film they contained, were soon available wherever film was sold. Fuji’s sale of a million single use cameras in six months led to the rapid development of other manufacturers’ models. Single use cameras were soon available with built in flash, panoramic lens, telephoto lenses, or with plastic shells that allowed them to be used under-

water. The cardboard box could be printed with custom designs and promotional messages or simply decorated for particular occasions. By 1996, a decade after their introduction, single use cameras were selling at a rate of 80 million annually in Japan alone. It was not until the very end of the twentieth

century that the cost of digital photography was lowered to the point where it became affordable for most families. However, the development of electronic family photography had begunmuch earlier in the form of home video. Sony’s 1965 portable, black and white video camera wired to a separate reel-to-reel half-inch video recorder was a relatively crude and expensive downscaling of professional television cameras and video recorders. By the early 1980s, it had been replaced by color camcorders making use of half inch and, in the 1990s, 8 mm video cassettes. A third generation of home video, in the form of the digital video camcorder, was introduced by Sony in 1982. By the mid-1990s, digital video camcorders, often no larger than conventional still cameras, could be fed into home computers, their footage edited by increasingly sophisticated software. The potential of this domestic version of television-computer convergence, as well as the continually decreasing price of both analogue and digital home video made it, by century’s end, the most widely used domestic alternative to silver-based photography. Digital still photography, as a mass marketed

consumer format, was introduced in tandem with the digital video cameras. While digital imaging on computers was first demonstrated in 1979 and marketed by Sony in 1982, the cameras were prohibitively expensive for home use. It was not until 1994 and 1995, respectively, that Kodak and Casio broke the US$1,000 price barrier. The following year, 20 other models of relatively low-cost digital cameras were introduced by Japanese electronics companies and one million units were sold. By decade’s end, sales of digital cameras had increased to approximately four million per year with prices of some models falling well below $500. Digital tools also contributed to changes in che-

mical-based family photography. After 1990, commercial photo developers could return digital prints of conventional film on Kodak’s photo CD, a device that also allowed for in-store and home computer editing of those prints. In 1996, Kodak, with more than 40% of the world photography market, and Fuji, with an additional third of it, together introduced their Advanced Photography System. This hybrid technology was based on magnetically striped cartridge film imprinted by

the camera with information used subsequently to set the parameters of digital developers and editing equipment. At the end of the twentieth century, it remained

to be seen whether Kodak and Fuji succeeded in creating anything more than a transitional technology. The exponential growth in home computers, computer speed, and computer memory as well as the increased accessibility of peripherals associated with digital photography (photo editing software, ink jet printers, scanners) offered the family photographer more options for less cost. Digital images could be produced by scanning conventional images or shot directly with digital cameras. Home darkrooms, while greatly facilitated throughout the century by downscaled commercial equipment, and improvements in pre-mixed chemicals and prepared papers, couldnotmatch theoptions available in even the basic photography software distributed with printers and scanners. More advanced software, most notably Adobe Photoshop, offered professional photo finishing on home computers. Finished photographs could be viewed on screen or printed as hard copy on a variety of photo papers. Digital images couldbestored inpassword-protectedvirtual albums, transmitted toanynumberof recipientsanywhere in the world via e-mail ormounted for universal viewing on theWorldWideWeb.