Fotron
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| Fotron III photo by graustark |
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| Fotron photo by Rick Soloway |
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| Fotron photo by captkodak |
The Fotron was a plastic camera from the early 1960s made in Glendale, California by a company called Traid Corporation. It had some unusual features for the time, with electronic flash, power winding and rechargeable batteries, and a peculiar button-controlled exposure system - making it heavy and bulky. The film was 828, pre-packaged into proprietary "snap-in" cartridges, that had to be sent back to the vendor for processing and reloading. Each cartridge held only ten 1x1-inch frames.
There were three versions, labelled, oddly, "Fotron", "Fotron III" and "Fotron" - in that order.
The camera batteries had to be charged for 18 hours to shoot just one 10-exposure cartridge, and 72 hours for more than one![1]
It was sold door-to-door at very high prices - from $150 upwards. A number of purchasers have taken out a class action against Traid Corporation, having paid $491.60, alleging that the true value was closer to $40[2]
