Walter Zapp, inventor of James Bond`s Minox spy camera, dies aged 97

Walter Zapp, inventor of the Minox mini camera featured in spy movies, has died, the manufacturer confirmed Monday. He was 97.

He died July 17 at home in Binningen, in northern Switzerland, said Thorsten Korteneier, spokesman for Minox GmbH in Wetzlar, Germany.

Zapp`s invention, which fits in the palm of a hand and weighs less than a cigarette lighter, has been used in James Bond movies and other films although he didn`t devise the camera with espionage in mind.

More than 1 million have been sold, Korteneier said. But Zapp realized no great riches from his work, having sold the patent after World War II for a lump sum and a life annuity.

Zapp was born in 1905 in Riga, Latvia. Describing himself as a weakling, he said he began wondering about making cameras smaller while lugging around heavy wooden cameras as a 17-year-old apprentice art photographer in Tallinn, Estonia.

Fourteen years later, in 1936, Zapp succeeded in producing a prototype that could be hidden in a closed hand.

He began manufacturing them in Riga, but fled to Germany in 1941 when the Baltic states got caught in the conflict between the Soviet Union and Germany during World War II. He brought along one of his cameras and the design, and after the war he founded Minox in Wetzlar with a friend.

Two of the company`s main investors were cigar factories, which took over and dismissed Zapp after two years. He moved to Switzerland.

After the optics company Leitz acquired Minox in 1989, Zapp - in his 80s - was brought back as a development engineer.

Zapp is survived by a son and a daughter. A private funeral was held July 22 in Binningen.

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