Self-bracing credit-card-size camera for single-shot emergency use, and method for manufacture and distribution

Fuente: WIPO "rice"
The camera body is of sheet material. When in a usage condition it has four intersecting panels, each in the form of an arched segment. The arched panels are in two pairs, each pair being mutually opposed. One opposed pair is outward-concave, and the other is outward-convex. When squeezed together, the concave panels brace and stabilize the convex panels: the body is inherently strong and stable in its usage condition. When in a storage condition the same body has just two planar, parallel panels--readily carried in a wallet, or distributed by a mail in a magazine. A light-sensitive medium is held within the body. Mounted to the body is a lens for focusing a scene onto the sensitive medium, and a positively interlocked single-shot shutter mechanism for controlling passage of light through the lens. The sheet material, preferably all one piece, is scored along circular-segmental lines. Squeezing two opposite edges together, when the body is in the storage condition, forces the material to fold along the scores, forming the four arched panels, to place the body in the usage condition. Two of the arched panels have predefined widths, to correctly space apart the other two--and thereby the lens and the light-sensitive medium--for focusing of a scene by the lens onto the sensitive medium.