Baker Library Polaroid Corp. 3.16.2015

Box I.48

["One Step Photography"]

Land writes about how people need a simplistic system for taking images that people even without a talent for making images have a taste for and need for simplified medium of artistic expression. He writes, "The process must be concealed form non-existent-for the photographer, who by definition need think of the art in the taking and not in making photographs." (7)

This is such a powerful and early pamphlet that sets the standard for Polaroid process and its relationship to the user and consumer throughout the history of the company. Blackboxing is built into the process from the start. Interestingly enough, Land proposes that this is a response to consumer needs, their need to express their taste, etc.

["A Photographic Process"]

Land's typewritten manuscript about the development of his process. There is an amazing section on the separation of wet and dry processes it recalls Wall's statement on liquid intelligence.

Land writes

"In photographic literature there appear to be no reverences to such a system of photography, even as an ideal. Recently, however, there has been one suggestion of the need for a dry and approximately instantaneous camera.1

(1) V. Bush, The Atlantic Monthy, 176, 103 (1945) states, "Will there be dry photography?... when Brady made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure. Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps it need not be wetted at all. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately." (2)

This is also one of the first times perhaps we see the term "pod" being used to describe the container of the chemical reagent that develops the positive and negative films. Land is discussing ways to spread the reagent across the films in the camera. His third option is the pod:

"The reagent is contained in small pods that are as wide as the sheet but only a small fraction of its length.7

(7) Since this third way seems most promising, some details follow: The pod is a water- and oxygen-opaque sheet, folded, sealed at the ends, filled with reagent, and bonded along the long edge. Thus edge-bond is so made that when the pod passes through the rolls, the hydraulic pressure of the liquid within bursts this edge and the small quantity of liquid is then transported ahead of the rolls and between the two sheets. The quantity of liquid is so metered that there is negligible excess over the required for making the very thin layer. Provision is made for the small excess so that its existence is not apparent to the operator. The pods may be fastened either to the roll of negative material or to the roll of positive material so that they are automatically carried into place as the two sheets feed through the rolls. One extremely important detail is that if the reagent were to have the viscosity of ordinary developing solutions, rather complicated devices would be required to spread it uniformly. But as the reagent is made more viscous, the spreading problem becomes much simpler. An interesting consequent of the use of viscous reagent is that in the adjacent layers, there is left on one of them the very thin film of the material that was used to render the reagent viscous. In some of the processes to be discussed, the positive image is formed within this thin layer." (8-9)

["Model 95 Advertising Copy"]

The ad copy begins to refer to the reagent as a "jelly."

Ad that ran in the Boston Post on November 25, 1948 reads in part:

"The user does not see the chemical reagent that produces the picture. The film consists of a double role, one part of which looks like an ordinary negative, the other like a roll of plain paper. Concealed in the paper roll are tiny sealed containers, one for each of the eight pictures in the roll. These "pods" contain a few drops of jellied chemical reagent. When a tab is pulled out of the camera, the film and paper pass between two small rollers, opening the container and releasing the jelly, which spreads between the two sheets to form a picture-layer only one ten-thousandth of an inch thick. The jelly develops the negative and simultaneously forms the positive image. It needs a minute to finish its action and then the picture is ready to be removed. It can be handled immediately."

Jelly, jellied, etc.

Also, the Polaroid camera is always pitched as a group activity, something done with people together in a social setting.

In an ad magazine article, it is mentioned that Polaroid essentially had to ration film to its customers. Each new buyer would receive coupons guaranteeing a certain number of film rolls, because it was so difficult for Polaroid to keep the supply in step with the demand. The number of coupons ensured a lot of film, however according to the copy, something around the lines of 10 times the amount of film a regular roll camera owner would shoot in a year. Thus, the rations seemed for of a stopgap measure, or an act to manage expectations.

Box I.49

There is a whole complicated selling and advertising apparatus for Polaroid credit plans, trial offers, how to display, how to demonstrate, how to initiate conversation with owners and non-owners, etc.

Box I.50

["Polaroid Cameras: Novelty of Marvel?"]

Modern Photography article in May 1955 by John Wolbarst describes how to save the negative from Polaroid film to make enlargements. So, the negative is not entirely blackboxed from the process. When it is exposed to light after removing the positive print, it is destroyed. But if it the peeling process is performed in complete darkness, and the negative washed and fixed before being exposed to light, it can be used to make enlargements and reproductions easily.

Box I.56

"picture-in-a-minute" is a continual shorthand for Polaroid Land Camera photography through the 1950s.

Polaroid Minute Man magazine picture of television, Kruschev and a child.

MAD magazine spoof