Introduced in 1912, this was the first 127 camera. However despite its age, and historical signifigance, its remarkably common - due to the huge numbers originally sold. Various versions of the Vest Pocket were produced, and only a small number of these are particulary rare.
This is the most common variant, which features an authographic back - a door in the rear of the camera, allowing user to write onto the film with a metal styles, and then expose it to light, so that the text is recorded onto the image. Though Kodak introduced this feature in around 1914, and presisted with it throughout the VP folding series it's been sugguested that the lack of discovered negatives with data recorded on them indicates the feature was not particularly popular. Perhaps the "A127" film required for authographic operation was a little more expensive, and users repeatedly chose the cheaper option. It's also amusing to observe that vertually every one of these cameras sold today is descrived as "having the stylus which is usually missing".
It features a standard iris mechanism, and shutter speeds of 1/25th,1/50th,B and T. The lens is fixed focus at a distance of a few feet, and the aperture is marked in terms of composition styles, sugguesting that the user should stop the iris down to get greater distances. The camera should take 8 6x4's per roll, but unfortunatly the shutter on this particular camera is no longer operational.
The Vest Pocket Folding series continued, with the model B, and the Series III, along with a large number rarer variants.