The film is housed in a dual spool plastic cartridge that also registers the film. The film was available in 12 and 24 image lengths, but today it is only available in 24-image rolls. Like the 120 format, there is a continuous backing paper, and the frame number and type is visible through a window at the rear of the cartridge. The film does not need to be rewound, and is very simple to load and unload.
The 126 cartridge was introduced by Kodak in 1963 under the brand name Kodapak, together with the Instamatic camera. Around ten million cameras were made, but with a few notable exceptions, the format were never really used for anything but fairly simple amateur cameras. Kodak and others discontinued the format at the end of December, 1999. Ferrania in Italy is still producing 126 cartridges of ISO 200 color print film.
International standard: ISO 3029