It's a clear plastic cube, about an inch on each side. Look closely and you'll see four tiny compartments, one behind each side. Each has a small curved mirror and a glass bulb no bigger than a pea.
The bottom has a little plastic post. And some of the cubes you find today look strange: one or two sides clear, the others clouded and bubbled, as if they'd been melted from the inside.
They had.
Three Clues
- They came three to a pack, and somebody always ran out on Christmas morning.
- The cube turned a quarter turn every time you used it.
- It was over in a fraction of a second, and it left little purple spots in your eyes.
What People Usually Guess
A tiny night light. Close. It did make light, just not for very long.
A dice or a game piece. The cube shape makes sense. But no dots.
A part from a car's turn signal. Reasonable, with the bulbs inside. Wrong machine, though.
The Answer: It's a Flashcube
This was the flash for millions of family cameras. You snapped it onto the top of a camera, and each of its four bulbs fired once to light one indoor photo.
How It Worked
- Press the flashcube onto the socket on top of the camera.
- Take a picture. One bulb fired, lit by a fine metal filament burning inside it, while the tiny mirror threw the light forward.
- Advance the film. The cube rotated a quarter turn so a fresh bulb faced forward.
- After four pictures, pull off the used cube (careful, it might be warm) and put on a new one.
Used bulbs turned cloudy and blistered, which is how you knew which sides were spent.
Who Used It, and When
In the summer of 1965, GTE Sylvania and Eastman Kodak announced the flashcube at a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. It was made for Kodak's new Instamatic cameras, which had come out in 1963 and sold by the millions.
Before the flashcube, you screwed single flashbulbs into a reflector one at a time, and a hot used bulb could burn your fingers. The cube was designed to stay cool and fire more reliably.
TIME magazine reported that the cubes sold in packs of three for $1.95. On cameras with automatic film advance, you could take four shots in about five seconds.
In 1970, Sylvania and Kodak followed up with the Magicube, which fired mechanically and didn't need a battery in the camera at all.
Why You Don't See Them Anymore
By the mid-1970s, the flashcube was already on its way out. Cameras with flash built right in, and later tiny electronic flashes that could fire again and again, made disposable bulbs unnecessary.
But look through any family album from the late '60s and early '70s: those bright, slightly washed-out faces against dark backgrounds at birthday parties and Christmas mornings. That's the flashcube.
Still Got One?
Unused flashcubes still turn up in camera bags and junk drawers, and some old cameras still work with them. Collectors look for packs still in the original box. Just don't expect a used one to give you any more light.
What's one family photo from the '60s or '70s you'd save first in a fire?
Sources
- "Hobbies: Quick As a Wink," *TIME*, 1965
- "A New Flash Cube Is Introduced," *The New York Times*, June 25, 1970
- Marget Long, *Flash + Cube (1965–1975)*, punctum books, 2013
- "The Kodak Flashcube," *Slate*, Dec. 2021
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