70 Years of Instant Photography

February 21, 2017

The world’s first instant camera, created by Edwin H. Land, was introduced in New York 70 years ago today.
On 21 February 1947, the Harvard drop-out, inventor and entrepreneur Edwin H. Land demonstrated the world’s first instant camera during a meeting of the Optical Society of America in New York. His system, consisting of camera, film and developing chemicals, took around one minute to produce a finished black-and-white photograph.

In the following year, fifty-seven units of the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95 were offered to the public at the Jordan Marsh Department Store in Boston in the lead-up to Christmas. Every single camera (priced at $89.75) and all available film sold out the same day.

Polaroid went on to produce a total of around one-and-a-half million units of Land’s 95, 95A and 95B models – making the company’s name forever synonymous with instant photography.
 

70 Years of Instant Photography