the marketplace was buzzing with high-tech prod-
ucts inspired by an expanding high-tech society. The
cameras were especially popular with youth and
young adults, inspiring a new craze for taking snap-
shots.
Kodak had introduced its first camera for non-
professionals in 1888, and in 1900 it had developed
its even more popular Brownie camera, which sold
for only one dollar. Shooting snapshots became a
part of everyday life in the twentieth century, lead-
ing to further developments in camera and film
technology, including the QuickSnap and the Fling
in the 1980’s.
Like the early Kodak cameras, the 1986 single-use
cameras also involved little more than “pressing the
button” and letting the manufacturer “do the rest.”
However, the single-use cameras of the 1980’s were
not returned to the consumer; only the photographs
were returned, while the cameras were often par-
tially recycled. Some were even remanufactured and
then resold with a new lens and, for models with a
flash, new batteries. This practice led Kodak, Fuji-
film, and others to warn of potential problems with
“used” single-use cameras. The Fujifilm camera used
Super HR 400 35mm color print film. It came with a
thirty-five-milimeterf/11 lens and a single shutter
speed of 1/100 second. The Kodak camera was
equipped with Kodacolor VR-G 200 print film in 110
format. It had a twenty-five-millimeterf/8 lens and a
shutter speed of 1/120 second.
Within a few years, various models of single-use
cameras were made for underwater use or for use in
rainy or damp conditions. Built-in flashbulbs al-
lowed for indoor shots. Some cameras could take
panoramic shots or pictures in 3-D. Soon, they could
take black-and-white photos and even instant Polar-
oid “Popshots.” In the early twenty-first century, the
cameras were offered in digital format, and single-
use cameras also were sold through vending ma-
chines placed in what Kodak called “point of pic-
ture” locations.
Impact The single-use camera introduced to 1980’s
consumers provided ease of use, affordability, and
convenience. The cameras were simple and straight-
forward, requiring nothing more from the consumer
than pointing and shooting; they were inexpensive
(costing around ten dollars); and they were conve-
nient, available everywhere. The QuickSnap and
the Fling helped reinvigorate amateur photography,
which, even into the 1980’s, had a reputation as a
hobby for those with money and technical savvy. To
be able to purchase a camera for little more than the
cost of two movie tickets and immediately begin tak-
ing pictures was a milestone in the history of photog-
raphy, and it marked 1986 and 1987 as years to re-
member.Further Reading
Ford, Colin, and Karl Steinorth, eds.You Press the But-
ton, We Do the Rest: The Birth of Snapshot Photography.
London: D. Nishen, 1988.
Medintz, Scott. “Point, Shoot, Toss.”Money, July,
1999, 143.
West, Nancy Martha.Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
Desiree DreeuwsSee alsoCamcorders; Fads; Photography.DNA fingerprinting
Definition Technique using human genetic
material for forensic identificationDNA fingerprinting revolutionized human identification
and the field of forensic science. It enabled law enforcement
agents to identify many criminals they otherwise could not
have caught, as well as exonerating innocent people who
had been wrongly convicted of crimes before the technique
was developed.DNA fingerprinting, also referred to as DNA typing
or DNA profiling, is a technique developed by Alec
Jeffreys, an English geneticist at the University of
Leicester. When Jeffreys digested genomic deoxyri-
bonucleic acid (DNA) into small fragments using
enzymes called restriction endonucleases, he discov-
ered that the genome contained short pieces of
DNA that were repeated many times and dispersed
throughout the entire genome. Jeffreys realized that
since each unique individual had a different num-
ber of repeats, people could be identified on the ba-
sis of the resulting patterns found in their DNA.
Since restriction endonucleases were used to pro-
duce the DNA fragments and since the number of
repeated units varied from one person to another,
Jeffreys’s technique was often referred to as restric-
tion fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and as
variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR).292 DNA fingerprinting The Eighties in America