Polaroid and Instagram

I was recently thinking about Facebooks acquisition of Instagram and how in some ways Instagram is the modern version of the infamous Polaroid "Instant Camera".  Both products were created with the purpose of instantly sharing photographs with friends and family.  One of these two products no longer exists and I couldn't help but wonder what happened.  I use to love Polaroids and recently bought one at a local thrift store in Bushwick (featured in photograph).  I though I would share my findings with the rest of the world.

History
The first Polaroid camera was invented in 1946 by physicist Edwin Land, however, the camera was not made available to the public until November of 1948.  Polaroid pretty much went uncontested in the "instant picture" market until Kodak took a stab at the competition.  This proved to be a losing battle for Kodak as Polaroid took them to court in 1980 for patent infringement.  After an extensive amount of legal distraction, Polaroid won the case in 1985 and remained a dominant force in the market.  Finally, in 2001 the glory days were over for Polaroid as they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Despite remaining hopeful that people would still desire physical photographs in a digital age, Polaroid was eventually forced to deal with reality and allegedly stopped production of the once popular "instant film" back in 2008.  However, this wasn't the end of Polaroid, just the instant camera.  In 2010 Polaroid appointed Lady Gaga as their creative director.

Comments

[Stef]

We may compare the Polaroid camera with the daguerreotype. This technique was born in 1839!! Louis Daguerre and Joseph Nièpce found a way that would preserve a captured image by the direct-positive-system "Daguerreotype". Mankind waited since the middle of the 16th century (invention of the Camera obscura) to retain a natural picture without pen and color (explanation of the Camera obscura can be found in the IMP)