Land made the first public demonstration of instant photography on February 21, , during a meeting of the Optical Society of America in New York City. The first Polaroid camera, called the Model 95, and its associated film went on sale in at a department store in Boston. The cameras sold out in minutes. The Model 95 produced only sepia-toned images, and after the film emerged from the camera, photographers had to wait exactly 60 seconds before peeling off the negative backing of the image.
A true non-sepia black and white version followed in Moving to black and white involved a separate set of challenges, primarily in stabilizing the developed image. These films required the additional step of manually swabbing the developed image with a polymer coating to prevent darkening of the photograph. The series of innovations released by Polaroid over the next decade reduced the early problems and improved picture quality remarkably.
By the s, traditional photography offered color films to the amateur photographer, and thus the next challenge for Polaroid was to develop instant color film. The project required a tremendous series of chemical breakthroughs, which were accomplished over a span of 15 years. Polaroid scientists had to perfect each component of their version of color photographic film—inventing new dyes, negative films, positive sheets, and developers—and give precise timing to the series of chemical reactions involved in taking and developing a photograph.
More complex than either sepia or black and white photography, color photography used three separate negative layers to record colors. The infinite number of color nuances captured by the human eye can be reproduced by appropriate intensities of three colors—red, green, and blue.
They are developed in a photograph using the complementary dyes cyan, magenta, and yellow. Starting in the late s, Land and his team worked with traditional methods for producing color photographs, but they quickly learned to adapt to the thin confines and short timeframes required of Polaroid color photography.
After working on the project for several years, the team found inspiration in a new type of compound proposed by project leader Howard Rogers — that would allow them to completely reformulate the color developing process. Instead of using separate dye and developer molecules for each of the three colors used in film, Rogers proposed, and then led the creation of, new compounds called dye developers in which both components were tethered together. These new molecules served both functions and simplified the overall film unit.
Not only did Polaroid chemists test thousands of new molecules to give adequate colors to their new film, they also orchestrated the series of chemical reactions taking place within the film unit. Each color followed a separate path of development from its negative layer to the positive photographic print. Timing of these molecular movements was crucial for proper color formation. Land maintained his goals of second development with shelf- and temperature-stability and permanence.
By , Polaroid had solved several problems, such as brightening the color dyes and preparing factories for commercial production; however image permanence remained an issue. The alkaline developer molecules, necessary for dissolving the dye developers, transferred with the dyes to the positive layer where they would immediately begin to destroy the final image.
Finally, the team solved the problem by inserting acid molecules within a layer of polymer in the positive sheet where they would react with the alkaline developer molecules the moment after they completed the process of developing the image. When this happened, the acid and base combined, forming water in the film and fixing the dyes in place. Sales of Polaroid film, already rapidly increasing, expanded six-fold in the following decade.
For Polaroid, color instant photography represented an enormous commercial and technical success. The crowning chapter of the Polaroid system was the development of the SX camera and film. The project represented ultimate simplicity and reward for photographers—all they had to do was press the camera button and watch as the image developed before their eyes.
Some early films required additional steps by the user, such as swabbing the developed image with a coating to stabilize it or adhering the image to a hard backing to prevent curling.
The development of the SX and its film required a complete reformulation of the Polaroid system. Above all, the film was integral, meaning that the negative, positive, and developers were all contained within a film unit and would remain there after developing.
To accomplish this, the positive layers had to be transparent to allow light to penetrate them and expose the negative, below. Minimizing the complexity of the undertaking, Land described the project to The Photographic Journal in For several minutes chemical reactions occur rapidly one step after another in that thin sandwich and then this progression slowly stops.
There is peace again and the picture is complete. The simplicity of the SX system for photographers belied its technical complexity. Within the 2 millimeter thick film unit was a sandwich of thin polymer sheets, a positive image-receiving sheet, reagent, timing and light reflecting layers, and the tri-color negative—17 layers in total. The camera itself was a remarkably sleek design.
Edwin Herbert Land was born in Connecticut on May 7, However, a group of Dutch entrepreneurs were not willing to let go of Polaroid that easy, and started the initiative titled the Impossible Project. The process of resurrecting the Polaroid camera was not easy; once the lease for the company was acquired and there was access to the Polaroid machinery, it involved redeveloping some processes all over again :.
So they basically had to reinvent the process from scratch — and the early results were pretty rough. The Impossible Project actually turned out to be possible, and the world now has the gift of instant photography, once again. There are two reasons for the resurgence in interest of instant photography, according to Polaroid President and CEO Scott. It looks like now that Polaroid cameras have returned and are surging with popularity due to the nostalgic feel and tangible advantage of being able to hold a photo.
With the advent of photography based apps such as Instagram now sporting photos of instant photography photos now being seen and displayed in our homes, it seems Edwin Land gave us a timeless technology to help us preserve our memories for years beyond what we had previously thought. Will Ames is an author and editor for the old timey.
With a BA in history and a passion for vintage items and retro inspired tech, Will has a passion for researching his favorite products, collectibles and stories from days gone by. Light is considered polarized if the amplitude varies in a consistent manner perpendicular to the direction the wave is traveling. Given the right material for the light waves to pass through, the light waves may be rotated into another plane, slowed down or blocked. Modern 3D goggles work because one eye receives light waves vibrating along the horizontal plane while the other eye receives the light vibrating along the vertical plane.
Before Land, researchers built components to control polarization from rock crystals, which were assigned almost magical names and properties, though they merely decreased the velocity or amplitude of light waves traveling at specific orientations.
His inexpensive polarizer made it possible to reliably and practically filter light so only wavelengths with a particular orientation would pass through. Land founded the Polaroid Corporation in to commercialize his new technology.
His sheet polarizers found applications ranging from the identification of chemical compounds to adjustable sunglasses. Polarizing filters became standard in photography to reduce glare. Today the principles of polarized light are used in most computer and cellphone screens, to enhance contrast, decrease glare and even turn on or off individual pixels. Polarizing filters help researchers visualize structures that might not be seen otherwise — from astronomical features to biological structures.
The Polaroid company actually published a magazine advertisement for their black-and-white film before it was available, and their employees worked quickly to meet public demand. As instant camera technology progressed, it became possible for the prints to develop within a minute before the eyes of the user oftentimes, people would wave Polaroids in the air to encourage faster image development.
After the popular black-and-white prints came the peel-apart color prints in , and non-peel-apart color prints followed in By , the height of its popularity, Polaroid held two-thirds of the instant camera market, despite competition from Kodak.
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