Polaroid camera. History of invention and production

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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
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Polaroid camera. History of invention and production

The history of technology, technology, objects around us

Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us

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The American company Polaroid Corporation is widely known as a developer and manufacturer of photo kits for a single-stage photo process, as well as cameras for shooting with these kits.

A single-stage photo process, diffusion photo process is a technology for quickly obtaining a positive photographic image using photographic materials with automatic development with built-in chemicals. Such photographic materials have a more complex device than traditional ones, but do not require processing in a darkroom. Based on the materials of a single-stage process, there is instant photography, which, before the advent of digital photography, was the only way to quickly obtain ready-made images and was widely used among amateur photographers.

Polaroid camera

In 1927, Edwin Land, who had just completed his freshman year in chemistry at Harvard, was walking down Broadway in New York. The abundance of shining neon advertisements and headlights of cars blinded him, and he wondered if it was possible to protect himself from the streams of blinding light.

This idea so captivated him that he dropped out of university and devoted the next couple of years to studying the theory of this issue at the New York Public Library. He comprehended the practical side of the problem under the cover of darkness, making his way into the Columbia University laboratory, which was unlocked at night.

In 1929, enriched by his knowledge of the polarization of light, Land returned to Harvard and three years later founded Land-Wheelwright Laboratories with his professor Wheelwright. In 1934, Kodak, which needed thin and inexpensive polarizing filters, offered them a contract for $10. It took the partners three years to create the necessary technology, but the result was so successful that they decided to rename the company in honor of the resulting product - Polaroid.

During World War II, the company actively collaborated with the military, developing optical instruments, sights and sunglasses for pilots. But the real glory was waiting for her ahead. In 1943, while walking with his three-year-old daughter Jennifer, Edwin Land took her photograph, and the girl asked why she could not immediately look at the resulting picture. Trying to explain to her why it was impossible, Edwin was defeated. As he later recalled, while they were returning home through the picturesque town of Santa Fe, he was already considering how to solve this problem. "In an hour, I had a very clear idea of the whole scheme of the process - both chemical and physical, and hurried back to discuss it with colleagues."

It took Land four years to develop and implement a scheme that combined film, photographic paper, and a chemical developing and printing system in photographic material. And in 1947, he triumphantly spoke at a meeting of the American Optical Society, where he spoke about his idea, and at the end demonstrated a working prototype. The demonstration produced, as George Green, a correspondent for the Boston Globe newspaper who was present at the meeting, later wrote, “the effect of an exploding atomic bomb”: in less than 60 seconds, in front of the astonished scientists, Land had a freshly taken picture in his hands.

The first batch of Model 95 cameras at $89,75 apiece (about $800 in today's money) was shipped to Boston's Jordan Marsh department store after Thanksgiving 1948. Polaroid marketers expected them to sell out by Christmas. They were wrong: all 56 cameras and all stocks of photographic materials were sold within a couple of hours (and when the company entered the national market, the situation repeated itself). In 1963, Polaroid released a color photosystem, and in 1972, the famous dry photosystem SX-70, which finally turned the Polaroid name into a household name for the next few decades.

Author: S.Apresov

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