According to Wikipedia’s infobox, the Kodak Brownie is classified as a box camera.
A box camera is a simple camera built around a light-tight box, a basic lens, and straightforward controls. The Kodak Brownie fit that description: its early body was cardboard covered with leatherette, and it used a simple meniscus lens rather than the complex optical systems found in later professional cameras.
Eastman Kodak released the original Brownie in February 1900. It was designed to make photography inexpensive and accessible, using roll film that customers could load and send for processing. The first model cost just $1 in the United States, helping turn snapshot photography into a mass-market activity.
The Brownie was not an instant camera, because it did not produce a finished print immediately. It was also not an SLR or rangefinder: it lacked the mirror-and-prism viewing system of an SLR and the coupled distance-measuring mechanism of a rangefinder. Its simplicity was its defining feature.
Kodak produced many Brownie variants through 1986, but the family name remained strongly associated with affordable, easy-to-use box cameras.