The first product to carry the Minox name was a subminiature camera, conceived in 1922, and finally produced in 1936, by Baltic German Walter Zapp.

Yet in part due to its high manufacturing costs, the Minox became more well known as a must-have luxury item.

[citation needed] From the start the Minox also gained wide notoriety as a spy camera.

Minox continues to operate today, producing or branding optical and photographic equipment.

The family moved to Reval (now called Tallinn, Estonia) where he first took a job as an engraver before finding a position with a photographer.

Jürgens contacted an English representative of the VEF (Valsts Elektrotehniskā Fabrika) electrotechnical manufacturing business in Riga (by then independent Latvia) who then arranged a meeting where Zapp demonstrated the Minox prototype (UrMinox), with a set of enlargements made from Ur-Minox negatives.

[4] In the same time, VEF had received patent protection on Zapp's inventions in at least 18 countries worldwide.

It also attracted the attention of intelligence agencies in America, Britain and Germany, due to its small size and macro focusing ability.

The new camera very much resembled the original, but was made with a plastic chassis covered by an aluminum shell.

During this time, the Minox company continued to develop the camera, working with Gossen[citation needed] to develop a companion miniature exposure meter, as well as improved models such as the Minox B, which incorporated an even smaller Gossen-designed meter into the camera itself.

These included flash guns, viewfinder attachments, tripod mounts, and copying stands, all increasing the camera utility in a variety of applications.

Limited editions of the camera were also produced in a variety of luxury finishes, such as gold plating.

There was also a fully electronic entry-level model, the EC, which had a very different internal design and a fixed-focus lens.

[7] The Minox subminiature camera attracted the attention of intelligence agencies in America, Britain and Germany, and most of the Eastern Bloc (East Germany, Romania) due to its small size and macro focusing ability.

There is at least one document in the public record of 25 Minox cameras purchased by the US Office of Strategic Services intelligence organisation in 1942.

[8] The close-focusing lens and small size of the camera made it perfect for covert uses such as surveillance or document copying.

The Soviet spy John A. Walker Jr., whose actions against the US Navy cryptography programs represent some of the most compromising intelligence actions against the United States during the Cold War era, used a Minox C to photograph documents and ciphers.

An 18-inch (460 mm) measuring chain was provided with most Minox subminiature cameras, which enabled easy copying of letter-sized documents.

A Minox B, operated by remote trigger and protected in a special housing, was used to inspect the interior of the United States Army's SL-1 experimental nuclear reactor after it experienced an internal steam explosion in 1961.

It was equipped with a parallax correcting viewfinder, which was coupled to a Cooke triplet type Minostigmat 15 mm f/3.5 lens.

The lens was capable of focusing as close as 20 cm, and, due to its small image size, provided such depth of field at full aperture that a diaphragm was deemed unnecessary.

Customers complained of film scratches with this new design, so most of these lenses were replaced by MINOX with the later curved-field compensating lens.

The Complan lens has a curved film plane, hence in these cameras the negative must be held in an arc to improve the edge-to-edge sharpness of the image.

Opening the camera causes the pressure plate to press the film into a concave or flat (depending on the model) surface to stiffen thin emulsions for better clarity.

The 35 mm/2.8 Minotar/Minoxar lens was very sharp, with low distortion, while the camera's metering-system's capability to produce excellent results especially under low-light conditions was outstanding – using exposure times of up to two minutes.

The Minox 110S has a Carl Zeiss Tessar 25 mm/2.8 unit focusing lens, and magicube flash.

[12] Minox currently produces optics for nature and wildlife observation, for marine and water sports purposes, and for hunting.