Flash Cubes - Kodak Instamatic Commercial ~ 1965 Eastman Kodak Company

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_(photography)#flashcube

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

In 1965 Eastman Kodak of Rochester, New York replaced the individual flashbulb technology used on early Instamatic cameras with the Flashcube developed by Sylvania Electric Products.

A flashcube was a module with four expendable flashbulbs, each mounted at 90° from the others in its own reflector. For use it was mounted atop the camera with an electrical connection to the shutter release and a battery inside the camera. After each flash exposure, the film advance mechanism also rotated the flashcube 90° to a fresh bulb. This arrangement allowed the user to take four images in rapid succession before inserting a new flashcube.

The later Magicube (or X-Cube) retained the four-bulb format, but did not require electrical power. It was not interchangeable with the original Flashcube. Each bulb in a Magicube was set off by releasing one of four cocked wire springs within the cube. The spring struck a primer tube at the base of the bulb, which contained a fulminate, which in turn ignited shredded zirconium foil in the flash. A Magicube could also be fired using a key or paper clip to trip the spring manually. X-cube was an alternate name for Magicubes, indicating the appearance of the camera's socket.

Other common flashbulb-based devices were the Flashbar and Flipflash, which provided ten flashes from a single unit. The bulbs in a Flipflash were set in a vertical array, putting a distance between the bulb and the lens, eliminating red eye. The Flipflash name derived from the fact that once half the flashbulbs had been used, the unit had to be flipped over and re-inserted to use the remaining bulbs. In many Flipflash cameras, the bulbs were ignited by electrical currents produced when a piezoelectric crystal was struck mechanically by a spring-loaded striker, which was cocked each time the film was advanced...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instamatic

The Instamatic is a series of inexpensive, easy-to-load 126 and 110 cameras made by Kodak beginning in 1963. The Instamatic was immensely successful, introducing a generation to low-cost photography and spawning numerous imitators.

During its heyday, the range was so ubiquitous that the Instamatic name is still frequently used (erroneously) to refer to any inexpensive point-and-shoot camera. (It is also frequently used incorrectly to describe Kodak's line of instant-picture cameras, the Kodamatic series.)

The Instamatic name was also used by Kodak on some Super 8-based home-cine cameras...

History

Early Instamatics

The first Instamatics went on sale for $16 in early 1963 [$131.30 in 2018] and were soon followed by the 300 (which had a light meter), the 400 (which had a light meter and a spring driven film advance), and the 700 (which had a light meter, focusing, and selectable shutter speeds). They were the first cameras to use Kodak's new 126 format. The easy-load film cartridge made the cameras very inexpensive to produce, as it provided the film backing plate and exposure counter itself and thus saved considerable design complexity and manufacturing cost for the cameras. A wide variety of print and slide film was sold by Kodak in the 126 format...