Vest Pocket Kodak Camera, Model B, 1930s-1940s.
Brick Store Museum Collection, 89.53.6a.

Postcards, much like photographs, document history. Early 20th-century photographers often memorialized a place, marked an important event, or even captured a family gathering and printed them as postcards. Cameras of the era took film of a size that produced postcard-sized images; thus, it was a relatively easy and inexpensive way of printing small batches of postcards.

The camera pictured above is the Model B of the Vest Pocket Kodak camera. It operates on the same principles as other "postcard" or folding pocket cameras, but it is smaller than some other contemporaneous models. Notice the instruction booklet that accompanies the camera and see that it has directions for manipulating the stylus and trap door (at the back of the camera ) to be able to write a caption on a negative before it is developed. This is how the white writing on the postcard images--also pictured in this scene--was created!

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