Introduced soon after the close of Wolrd war II, Kodak's Box Brownie was a basic family camera, a simple device that did everything the average person wanted - take point-and-shoot photographs. Like many milti-national manufacturing companies in the late 1950s, Kodak saw the sales potential in the vast numbers of children that were born after the war who were now about to enter adulthood, and developed a new range of inexpensive cameras to replace the Box Brownie for what would become the Baby Boomer generation.

Kodak introduced its new camera in 1963, under the name Instamatic. Unlike all other cameras which had to have the film loaded manually in the dark, the film for Instamatic cameras was supplied in a sealed cartridge; to load the film, all that had to be done was open the back of the camera, pop in the cartridge, close the camera and start shooting. The film was a new size, 26 mm wide, instead of the regular 35 mm. It was designated 126. 

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

The first Instamatic to be released was the Instamatic 50, which appeared in Australia in February 1963, about a month before the 100. With fixed shutter speed, aperture and focus, it continued in the tradition of Kodak's earlier Brownie cameras, providing a simple snapshot camera anyone could use. The 100 featured a built-in flashgun for AG-1 "peanut" bulbs, a feature lacking in the 50.

The lineup was soon expanded to include a variety of models from the basic but popular 100/104 to the automatic exposure 800/804, which featured an aluminum chassis, rangefinder, selenium light meter, and clockwork spring wind. The top-of-the-line model was the Instamatic Reflex SLR, which was made in Germany and could accept a variety of Retina S-mount lenses.

The Instamatic was an instant success; more than 50 million Instamatic cameras were produced between 1963 and 1970. Many other manufacturers attempted to capitalize on the popularity of the Instamatic with their own 126 cameras, including Canon, Olympus, Minolta, Ricoh, and even Rollei. Some of these models were far more sophisticated and expensive than the Kodak cameras: the Rollei SL26, for instance, featured interchangeable lenses, TTL metering, and a rangefinder, and retailed for $300.

A new series of Instamatics was introduced in 1970 to take advantage of the new Magicube flash technology, which was a disposable cube with a bulb on each of its four faces. Magicubes used mechanically triggered pyrotechnic detonators for each bulb, an improvement over flashcubes in that the need for batteries was eliminated. Instamatics with Magicube sockets were denoted by an "X" in the model number.

In 1972, Kodak introduced the Pocket Instamatic series for its new 110 format. The 110 cartridge had the same easy-load design as the 126 format but was much smaller, allowing the cameras to be very compact (hence the "Pocket" designation). The top-of-the-line model was the Pocket Instamatic 60, which featured a stainless steel body, rangefinder, and automatic exposure. More than 25 million Pocket Instamatics were produced in under three years, and the 110 format remained popular into the 1990s. However, its tiny negative size severely limited print and slide quality.

In 1976, the Instamatic X line was updated for use with the new Flipflash system. These cameras were designated by the addition of the suffix "F" to the model number of the corresponding Magicube model. The Instamatic camera remained on sale until 1988.