![]() ![]() Instant cameras were falling out of fashion with the masses, forcing Polaroid to revamp its market strategies which resulted in factory closures and thousands of layoffs. ![]() The departure of Land following the Polavision debacle is seen by many to be the beginning of the end for Polaroid. ![]() The fallout was so vast, in fact, that Edwin Land was forced to resign from the company that he had founded. The competition from cassette tape formats like Betamax and VHS also sealed Polavision’s fate as a cataclysmic commercial failure which cost the company over $250 million in today’s money. However, because Polavision film could not record sound and could only be played on proprietary Polavision viewers that produced dark, murky images, it was unpopular and sold poorly. In 1977, Polaroid attempted to revolutionize home movies with its Polavision instant movie camera system. In early 1986, the court ruled in favor of Polaroid and ordered Kodak to exit the market but it wasn’t until 1991 that damages to the tune of $925 million (about $1.7 billion today) were awarded to Polaroid. Land responded immediately and filed a lawsuit against Kodak. Polaroid faced its first real competition in the instant photography market in 1976 when Kodak–which had actually helped Polaroid with manufacturing film–debuted its own type of instant film. Along with consumer models, Polaroid also produced instant products for commercial applications like passport photo cameras and macro cameras for medical and dental work. Over the next few decades, Polaroid produced millions of different instant cameras with notable models including the fully automatic 100-400 series, the groundbreaking SX-70 folding SLR, the ungainly Big Shot, the compact Spectra (which was also sold as the Minolta Instant Pro), and the ubiquitous OneStep/Pronto! which became one of the best-selling cameras of any type in the United States. By November 1948, Polaroid debuted the world’s very first instant camera: the Model 95. A few years later in 1947, Land demonstrated instant photography during a meeting held by the Optical Society of America. In 1943 while vacationing with his family, Edwin Land began exploring the possibility of instant cameras after his three year-old daughter asks him why she can’t see photographs immediately after they are taken. As World War II erupted in Europe, Polaroid began working with the US military producing equipment like special camouflage-revealing goggles and targeting systems for bombers. ![]() In 1937, the company changed its name to the Polaroid Corporation as it looked for further uses for its primary product. Afterward, he returned to Harvard to continue his studies but then left again to establish Land-Wheelwright Laboratories in 1932 in order to commercialize his polarizing filter (primarily for use in sunglasses). Having studied chemistry for only one year, Edwin Land left Harvard University for New York City where he developed a revolutionary polarizing filter that was not only effective but also inexpensive. Over the years, Polaroid established a photographic empire that still makes its name synonymous with instant cameras and instant film today. Land and his Harvard University physics professor George Wheelwright in 1932. Polaroid is an American brand founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Edwin H. ![]()
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