A cool snapshot
“With automatic exposure and an adjustable lens, every snapshot is now a hit! Thanks to stylish colours and a customisable design, it complements your look and becomes a cool accessory.” It is with these and similar words that a photographic technology is being marketed which, although decades old, is now back in full vogue: the instant camera. On 26 November 1948, the first of its kind went on sale in the USA.
It therefore seems like an anachronism in our thoroughly digitalised age, and yet it is very much in vogue, spreading good cheer not only at birthday parties and wedding celebrations. We’re talking about the instant camera. This is a camera which, immediately after the shutter is released, develops, fixes and prints the photographed subject onto a film consisting of paper, polymer and chemicals as a finished image; depending on the photographic paper used, photos can be in black and white or colour. The term ‘Polaroid’ is synonymous with the underlying technology; it refers, on the one hand, to a physical phenomenon, and, on the other hand, to the company of the same name founded by the physicist Edwin Herbert Land (1909–1991), who was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and his invention.
In 1937, Land founded his company, the ‘Polaroid Corporation’, with the aim of manufacturing and selling flat, film-like polarising filters made of plastic – so-called Polaroid filters; the name ‘Polaroid’ can therefore be traced back to the term ‘polarisers’. He had been granted the US Patent No. for this eight years earlier. To put it very simply, the function of the polarising filter is to superimpose and focus light waves of the same plane of vibration, thereby preventing diffuse light scattering. Instead of using single crystals for this purpose – as some of you may recall from physics lessons – Land used plastic films into which he incorporated tiny, aligned fragments of suitable crystals.
Land produced his first polarising film from cellulose acetate, a thermoplastic – i.e. a plastic that can be moulded when heat is applied – derived chemically from cotton, into which he incorporated tiny light-absorbing and polarising fragments of an iodine-containing crystal (herapathite). Later, Lang used colourless films made from polyvinyl alcohol (PVAL or PVOH), which is also a thermoplastic. The inventor achieved directional polarisation by first heating the film and stretching it in a specific direction, which resulted in the long-chain polymers aligning in parallel. Iodine crystallites were incorporated into the film as the polarising element; these attached themselves to the polymer molecules and thus also formed long (electrically conductive) chains.
Land’s plastic-based, sheet-like polarising filters had their advantages; not least, they were lighter in weight than glass, for example, and therefore also more affordable. And there was a high demand for his invention, not only for use in sunglasses. In the years following the Second World War, as demand for polarising filters continued to rise, Land finally turned his idea for an instant camera into reality. According to legend, the starting point for this idea was a question posed by his daughter during a holiday in 1943: why did one have to wait so long before being able to hold a photograph one had taken in one’s hands? His Polaroid ultimately fulfilled this wish within a minute. Thanks to the instant cameras, the inventor’s company became a global brand worth billions with up to 20,000 employees, writes journalist Christoph Gunkel in *Spiegel Geschichte*.
Land unveiled his finished invention in 1947 at the Optical Society of America by taking a photograph of himself and revealing it to the audience after just one minute. Land’s first camera, the Model 95, went on sale in the US on 26 November 1948 and sold out immediately.
Polaroid continued to produce new cameras and film – including X-ray film in 1951 – right up until February 2008: falling sales due to the booming market for digital cameras brought about the company’s demise. People were inclined to believe that the Polaroid camera, this once revolutionary invention, was obsolete – until, a few years ago, instant photography enjoyed a revival and continues to be popular. As the saying goes, ‘Those declared dead live on’.
References
- Edwin H. Land, ‘Some Aspects of the Development of Sheet Polarisers’, Journal of the Optical Society of America 12 (1951) 957–963, https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSA.41.000957
- On the history of the instant camera, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofortbildkamera
- On the history of the company, the brand and the ‘Polaroid’ product, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaroid
- Christoph Gunkel, ‘The man is a national treasure’, Spiegel Geschichte 21 February 217, https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/polaroid-erfinder-edwin-land-und-die-ersten-testaufnahmen-a-1135444.html
- Edwin H. Land, ‘A New One-Step Photographic Process’, Journal of the Optical Society of America 2, pp. 61–77 (1947), https://doi.org/10.1364/JOSA.37.000061