How many polaroid cameras were made

Polarization refers to a physical property of light waves. As the waves move forward, they vibrate vertically, horizontally, and at all angles in between. A polarizer acts like a slatted screen, with long, thin, parallel openings. These invisible slats stop all angles of light except those parallel to the openings. By doing so, polarizers provide the ability to select light waves with particular orientations.

Natural polarizers were effective at reducing glare and measuring angles of reflectivity, but they were large and expensive. Land imagined important uses for synthetic polarizers, if they could be produced. Moreover, because glare would be eliminated, headlights could be made brighter, thereby increasing the safety of nighttime driving.

In , Land enrolled at Harvard University to study physics, but his desire to conduct research caused him to leave after only a few months in search of more practical opportunities. There, he worked to develop a synthetic polarizer. Herapath had sought, with little success, to produce large synthetic crystals that would mimic the natural crystals that were the most useful polarizers available at the time. Land recognized an alternative, and he worked to arrange a mass of microscopic crystals to produce the same effect.

He created fine polarizing crystals, suspended them in liquid lacquer, and aligned them using an electromagnet. He then pulled a sheet of celluloid a thin, clear plastic through this solution to make a continuous sheet of crystals.

As the lacquer dried, the crystals retained their orientation, and the result was a polarizing sheet that was thin, transparent, and pliable. In , Land applied for his first patent, a method for producing his polarizing sheets. He returned to Harvard in the same year but left again before completing his undergraduate degree to focus on his emerging business.

By , Land had identified a more promising way to manufacture polarizing sheets: Instead of using electromagnets, he could apply the tiny crystals to a plastic sheet and, by stretching it, achieve parallel alignment of the crystals. Although it took several years to perfect, this method resulted in the commercial production of polarized sheets.

In , Land and George W. The company also invented a new product called a vectograph that combined two still images taken from slightly different positions and printed as oppositely-polarized images; using polarized glasses, viewers saw a 3-D image of the subject.

My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible. In , as the United States anticipated its entry into World War II, Land proposed a new task for the young company—to focus its scientific research and manufacturing on technologies that would help to win the impending war.

The U. Polaroid delivered anti-glare goggles for soldiers and pilots, as well as gun sights, viewfinders, cameras, and numerous other optical devices with polarizing lenses.

The vectograph, previously a novelty, became a tool for the U. Polaroid earned a reputation among the many companies working toward national goals for delivering optical technologies in short time frames. In addition to leading Polaroid research for military projects, Land also served as a consultant to the National Research Defense Committee, a body that emerged at the onset of WWII to direct non-governmental scientific research for war purposes.

In time, Land would continue his government service, working on Cold War technologies and advising presidents on scientific matters. Around this time, Land played an important role in the synthesis of quinine, the most effective antimalarial medicine then known. Quinine was produced from cinchona, a tropical plant grown primarily in Indonesia. Like other strategic materials that were produced abroad, the U.

In , Land hired Robert Burns Woodward — of Harvard University as a Polaroid consultant to find an alternative to the use of quinine in the production of polarizers quinine-based crystals were used to manufacture polarizers at the time and also to explore alternative methods for producing quinine. The first task was quickly completed, and Woodward then developed a plan for synthesizing quinine.

With the help of Polaroid and Harvard, Woodward and his colleague William von Eggers Doering — successfully synthesized quinine in Although it did not lead to a practical method of production, the synthesis was a milestone in the field of organic chemistry and was among the achievements that earned Woodward the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in As WWII drew to a close and the company neared the end of its military service, Land faced a new challenge: What would Polaroid do after the war?

Now leading a much larger company with more employees and greater research expertise than a few years earlier, Land was determined to put his company and its people to work during peacetime. If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it.

So you make the system to fulfill that need, rather than starting the other way around, where you have something and wonder what to do with it. In , during a vacation in Santa Fe, Land took a photo of his daughter, Jennifer, who was then three years old.

Land was immediately taken by the concept of instant photography and set off on a long walk to think through the idea. The instant photography system Land imagined was a radical departure from traditional film processing. In conventional photography, a photographer took a series of photographs on a roll of film and returned it to a laboratory later for development. There, a technician would work inside a darkroom, a specialized laboratory that contained the materials—chemical baths to start and stop the development, washing and drying equipment, and other supplies—needed to develop film and produce photographic prints.

The entire process took several minutes in the laboratory and usually several days from the time a photographer dropped off the film until a print was ready for retrieval. If successful, the system would allow users to evaluate and share images moments after they had been taken, a transformational change from traditional photography.

As in traditional photography, light entered the camera through a lens and was reflected onto a light-sensitive film that recorded a negative image of the scene. In a negative, dark areas of the scene appear light and light areas appear dark. After the silver halide crystals in the film were exposed to light, they were reduced to metallic silver. From this negative, a positive photograph could be developed. The reservoir, called a pod, was sealed within the film unit, making the entire process appear dry for the consumer even though it used liquid developers.

Land, developed the first instant camera as a hobby during World War II. After the war, the growth of the American economy made it possible for new industries to flourish. One of these industries was instant photography. Polaroid photography focused on minimizing the time between taking the photograph and viewing the image. However, the first Polaroid camera, which debuted in , still relied on the photographer to time the development of the film, pull out the print to burst a pod of developing chemicals, and peel away the top film.

Prynt is one company competing with the photography giants. The company is a hardware startup competing in an industry crowded with legacy names. The bare space was filled with little more than a few desks, a plush couch, and, of course, Prynt prints scattered about. In it refined the product and launched the Prynt Pocket—a smaller version that acts more like a portable iPhone dock than a clip-on. The same year, it grew its business 60 percent over the previous year. Often, they target niche markets that will never reach the requisite level of demand, or they target markets prone to saturation.

This is what happened with once-trendy products like degree action cameras and wearable fitness trackers. Both are creative hardware ventures that either physically or digitally connected to smartphones. Fitness trackers were subjected to overcrowding. Once the Fitbit was introduced, competitor after competitor followed. Ultimately, both cameras and fitness trackers became obsolete because iPhones copied and adopted the technology.

The iPhone is now waterproof, has much-improved image stabilization and video editing features, and a higher burst rate. You need your phone to incessantly capture every moment, and you need your Prynt—or Polaroid or Instax—to decide which of those make their way out of the digital world and into your real, physical one.

A widely cited study found that nostalgia weakens our attachment to money—in different experiments, people who were exposed to nostalgic elements were likely to pay more for products. It seems that nostalgia is market-proof. But that would indicate that the people most taken with analog products are those who experienced them the first time around. But instant printing is a comparatively ancient technology, one that its current, most passionate buyers have no personal memories of.

But he also believes it is something of a reaction to current attitudes. Fujifilm used to be a stalwart of CES. Photokina, a digital-photography-focused trade show next scheduled for September , is a more significant forum. The company chooses to meet privately with reporters in a hotel on the Strip instead. Photography has endured an almost unimaginable amount of change. Not only has the way we take photos evolved, but the way we share them and consume them, and what and how much they mean, have transformed as well.

The cameras managed to bridge the gap between analog and digital without alienating consumers. Instant-print devices offer balance to our data-sucking smartphone photo galleries. Younger generations have less and less connection to anything analog; the iPhone became the digital camera with Instagram as its photo book. Snapchat—despite its recent struggles—hugely changed how everyone under 30 thinks about photos.

Over time, pictures have become less and less precious, and Snapchat further eliminated some of the preciousness of photography by making it ephemeral; moments became easily replaceable. Instant printing is a corrective to all that. The continued and increasing success of instant-print cameras feels like a direct reaction to that.

Instagram, with its manufactured nostalgia, might conjure a feeling of creating keepsakes, but instant printing actually creates them.