Walter Zapp

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Walter Zapp (Latvian: Valters Caps; September 4, 1905 – July 17, 2003) was the inventor of the subminiature camera (Minox).

Zapp was born in Riga, Livonia. In 1934, he began developing the then revolutionary subminiature camera by first creating wooden models, which led to the first prototype in 1936. It was introduced to the market in 1938. After World War II, in 1945, he founded the Minox GmbH in Wetzlar.

In 2001 at the age of 96, when visiting Tallinn, the city where he invented Minox, he still remembered Estonian, which he had not spoken since World War II. He died in Binningen near Basel, Switzerland.

[edit] References

• Spycamera The MINOX Story, Morris Moses & John Wade, Hove Collectors Books, ISBN 1-874707-28-6
• Walter Zapp at Find-A-Grave