I Traveled 8,000 Miles For The Camera That Killed Polaroid
This was TikTok in 1977. The standard for home movie-making then was Super 8 film which had to be developed and scanned at a lab – but the Polaroid Polavision promised to do something remarkable: for the first time in history, you could shoot and play back your own short movies instantly. Now everyone can do it with their phone – but if you had that dream nearly 50 years ago, your only hope was the Polavision. It was an idea so innovative and so fantastic that… it was a total disaster. It cost Polaroid hundreds of millions of dollars and led to the ouster
of the company’s legendary co-founder – the father of instant photography. And it was the beginning of the end of one of the most transformative brands of the 20th century. All I wanted to do was experience the thrill of making a mini-movie with the Polavision Camera, but I ended up going down a big Chungus-sized rabbit hole that changed my life. Because the chemicals inside these 40-year old tapes, the chemicals that develop the footage, are all dried up.
I needed to find out whether the Polavision was lost media or extinct media – and there was only one person in the world who could help: an Austrian man named Doc who saved the last Polaroid factory in the world and who is a veritable Willy Wonka of analog technology. I went on an 8,338 mile journey in a hail mary attempt to get one single Polavision tape to work – and to take a photo on the world’s largest Polaroid camera, and to eat humanity’s oldest hot dog. Because only one locale provided a chance at all 3 things: I’m in Vienna! The August 1977 issue of Popular Science featured a comprehensive article by Everett H. Ortner detailing the technology of Polaroid’s revolutionary new instant-movie system. The 1 ½ pound Polavision camera is powered by four AA batteries and uses 5-inch proprietary cassette phototapes to capture up to 2 minutes and 35 seconds of video. There’s no microphone so the films are silent, just like Super 8 traditionally was until a larger spool was introduced in 1973, four years before Polavision. And although the article
states that the Polavision film did carry a magnetic sound stripe, it was never utilized. When you peel off the seal of a new tape and pop it out you can see the film is labeled “Unexposed” – and it became a word that will haunt me for the rest of my life. After you successfully record to a tape in the camera, the film will say “Exposed” and then… and then what? How do you actually watch the tape? And how does this even work? Before we get to that, I ordered my own Polavision Camera off eBay which claimed it was working. If you’ve seen my other tech videos, you know the emphasis is on was. It came paired with the Polavision Twi Light - which is a small two-lamp quartz light that attaches to the top of the camera. The bulbs are soldered in so you could never replace them and you really needed all the light you could get if you were shooting with the Polavision indoors. But recording the video is only the first step – you’ve got to actually play them.
To play the tapes you needed a monstrous Polavision Player, and finding one working now is nearly impossible. More on that later. Only a few came up in months of searching and they were always untested. Miraculously, with the power of eBay alerts and the fact I was probably the only person desperately seeking one of these - I finally snagged a working projector with a home movie tape included to test out. And.. the 23.2 lb monster with a 12-inch screen does work! You can see a mother and her child embracing decades ago, probably as the soundtrack to Grease plays in the background. So,
surely I can make my own heartwarming Polavision home movie now, right? No. No I cannot. The tapes are dead. The Polaroid instant technology that changed the world of photography forever used a chemical reagent that spread between the exposed negative and the positive sheet to develop the image. The Polavision is similar, with 12 drops of a honey-colored reagent that develops the film. So after a tape is exposed, it’s put into the Polavision Player where the film development takes place.
The 42 feet of film are spun inside the tape and the reagent coats it in about 20 seconds, then the player pauses for 45 seconds to allow it to dry. Once that process is completed the projection begins and you watch your home movie. When it’s done it quickly rewinds the film and the tape automatically pops up like bread shooting out of a toaster. You can see the tape now says “RERUN” to let you know you have a fully developed phototape. The problem isn’t just that after 40-plus years of sitting around in attics and closets that the chemical reagent is totally dried up, meaning you can’t develop an image, it’s that the film itself is crusted and frozen in place.
The player was working, I watched a tape successfully, I had the Polavision camera – so I hoped that I’d get lucky. I did not get lucky. When I tried recording with my Polavision, the film wouldn’t budge off the word “Unexposed.” So at this point any rational, well-adjusted, healthy human being would quietly resign themselves to the fact that this technology has simply passed its expiration date and move onto something else.
But I am no healthy human being. I found a fantastic video by Analog Resurgence called “The Last Working Polavision Film?” in which he received a tape that’d been in cold storage for decades - thereby preserving the precious chemical components inside. And it worked! So I reached out to him on X to ask if he had any more of those cold storage Polavision tapes. I eagerly awaited with baited Polaroid reagent breath for his reply about his supplier. “As far as I know, he received 2 from a guy in Germany and shot one himself and gave me the other.” So, yeah. That was that. The Polavision dream was over and… I gave up.
NO I DIDN’T. There had to be more tapes out there. I love old technology. You love old technology. And people like us are weird enough to… keep a blank tape for a device no one has used since ALF was on prime time. I needed to find someone obsessed with the preservation of analog technology – and someone infatuated with Polaroid. Out of the 8.2 billion people in the world, there had to be one.
After weeks of fruitless searching and dead-ends, I found Florian “Doc” Kaps, the man who saved the last remaining Polaroid factory in the world – and who might be able to save me. I found Doc’s email address on his Supersense website, which appeared to be some kind of workshop dedicated to analog technology, and I asked him if he had any Polavision tapes in cold storage. He replied NINETEEN minutes later with the following message: Hi Kevin. I (of course!) have a box of carefully stored and
archived original Polavision tapes in my secret storage. For some crazy adventures of some crazy visionaries. Teach me how to dance this. Truly, Doc. WHAT?! I called Doc planning to ask him to mail me some preserved tapes.
By the end of the conversation I was searching Google Flights. I dropped everything, packed my Polavision, and got on a plane to Vienna. There’s a feature documentary about Doc working to preserve the last Polaroid factory, located in Enschede, Netherlands – the factory’s machines were set to be sold for scrap. They told him it would be impossible – so he just called his venture the Impossible Project.
The documentary highlights not only his passion for analog technology but how he’s putting that into action with Supersense - a Noah’s Ark project of not just rescuing obsolete artistic devices but breathing new life into them by mixing the past with the present. He has smell vials? And the first ever directly-cut original lacquer coated metal discs that FINALLY allows the listener to hear the best possible version of music? And a restaurant? And the world’s only remaining peel-apart instant packfilm? It all makes perfect sense when you consider that “Doc” got his doctorate in biology with a focus on the muscles of spider eyes. Who is this guy? I booked my flight because I wanted those Polavision tapes, but I got on the plane because I needed to meet one of the most interesting people in the world. Okay. Here we go.
Hi. Oh, hello. Welcome in. Thank you very much. How was the trip? Uh, long. But, you know, we made it. So what did you think when I first sent you that email? Did you think that I was crazy or? I was impressed because, you know, you mentioned many words that, you know, not many people know. For example, you know, Polavision. And, so I had the feeling I was just waiting for ten years for you finally writing me this email. So that's why I wrote you back
right away and said, come on over. I think, there's some things I would love to show you. First of all. This place, has been created more than 100 years ago, so I think the, already some crazy visionaries started doing this project a long time before we have been born. So, I discovered the building a long time ago, and I, I contacted the owner over and over again to, give us the chance that we can build something here that I think is very important. It's basically, the Paradise of analog technologies. So that was the idea to, bring all these amazing technologies, out of the garages and, and flea markets, bring them here in one room and then start to think about how can we use these technologies with digital technologies.
So what is analog? That’s a good question and basically. For me analog is basically everything. Ya know, it’s what human beings are, it’s basically what what we can sense with our senses, it's what we can touch it’s what is real. There’s no precise answer, in my understanding, to exactly what analog is. Because it’s much more than technology, for me, it’s more like a philosophy. We had the experience that especially the young generation, they started to be super excited about what we are doing and it’s a place where we can experiment. So that’s somehow the big dream. Maybe we start with the easiest part. You know, when we talk about analog technologies and why people in the more and more digital world still need the analog technologies. The
easiest way to explain it is when we start with eating and drinking, because somehow the people still don't download their burgers from the internet. So, uh, let’s go to the restaurant. This is one of the most important sections. This place is not just a restaurant, but it also shows how the philosophy that we have in the whole building. Number one is we just use analog
technologies. So everything is prepared on wood fire. Everything we do is, done in front of the people. So we want to be very transparent so the people can see all the steps and all the handcraft and the people performing it. They are on the stage. There is no hidden room. So even the prep kitchen and the dishwashers, they are basically part of the whole appearance. So we don't want to hide anything and everybody is invited to the family. So that’s an important feature. The main product that we at the moment produce are Mastercut records. So this is high end,
records which are basically cut in the Japanese lacquer piece by piece. This is a very complicated process, and we put all our love and passion into it, but we hate to then promote it and say, this is the best, this is the most valuable. But we rather created a setup where the people just can listen to it. Because if you do your thing right, the experience in in
listening to the records, they will do all the marketing and they will make the people feel why this is, ya know, something that is different from a pressed vinyl. If we cannot succeed in creating the experiences, then, you know, we we have a problem. Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, he once said, marketing is what you have to think about if your product is no good. So I think that's a pretty, pretty nice quote. So this is our, Mastercut room. And it
is also perfect to show you the the history and the evolution of the place, because it all started with this machine. And this is a classic record cutting lathe from, the 60s. The beginning of the 70s. So these are the machines still out there, around 200 pieces all over the world that every record, is cut. So the first step is you put a lacquer disc onto the machines and with a little sapphire the sound waves are transferred into grooves. So that's always the process. But usually this super beautiful, wonderfully smelling record,
you never play, but you try to go into pressing process as fast as possible. And the first thing about, you know, when you do the pressing is you take off the, the record and then you put silver on it and you put it into electroplating. And in this process you get basically a stamper out of the grooves. Unfortunately, the the lacquer is destroyed in the process so nobody can hear it. And from the stamper, they then press all the records.
After listening to the first master, they say “Can you play right away after cutting it?” I said, “Yeah of course we can!” And after listening to it and hearing this incredible warm sound, I said, okay, we have to make this a product that, you know, for the first time in history of music can end up in the hand of the end customers. Ya know, people simply have to listen to that. This is part of, ya know, what we are doing to explain to the people. To show how technology works, to really get them excited,
to open up something that has been hidden in big pressing plants for a long time. Everybody was thinking okay the vinyl is going to disappear, the notebook is going to disappear, newspapers are going to disappear, magazines are going to disappear, books are going to disappear, but it didn’t happen. In fact, it was just the biggest chance these mediums ever had in, my opinion, to really even become more valuable as an opposition or as a total add-on to digital media. We can cut on a 98% recycle ocean plastic. One of the biggest problem of the traditional, because
pressing is that it's technology from the 40s and 50s. So it's totally a catastrophe for nature in many, many aspects. And it only makes sense with large quantities. So this process that we, that we want to introduce within the next weeks or months is, is not trying to replace vinyl right from the start, but it's a new take on a new kind of record which we can produce in very small editions and which opens up, totally new, creative possibilities for the artists. So it’s made and developed for the artists rather than the labels, so it's basically an invitation to create the most creative records in the most environmentally friendly way.
And the other part is the part where we, take care about the packaging because, you know, we want to give the full picture, to the artist, not only the record, but also regarding the packaging, which should not be just packaging, but for us, it's important part of the storytelling. And especially the main target is, again, to take care of one of the biggest flaws or problem of digital is that it doesn't create any real product. So my love and passion goes to, digital to analog converters. So find ways that I can free things that are digitally generated and melt them into reality by, you know, exposing it took pictures or printing it on paper or, creating, or, you know, cutting a record because this is I think the genius thing is to preserve and to give a value to even digitally generated content that it it's, it's transferred into objects of, of beauty and, you know, combining with handcraft. It’s analog little things and put effort into it, ya know? And to create a room where basically all of these technologies are in a room is always an important part of the inspiration. I think that’s important. This is the print shop. Everything you see here it’s functional and we use it
on a daily basis to create all our packaging, our communication material, our menu for the restaurant, the posters, everything. These are the ones to basically press posters in a big format, this is a legendary machine, this is a Heidelburger Tigel. You can do it, basically anything with the machine you can punch you can emboss you can print, you can foil print. So this is the machine we are using the most. If you make a letterpress poster, the luxury and the quality is defined by the imperfection, because digital, everything is perfect, you know, it's everything is sharp and whatever. So suddenly, there is a haptic to it,
that there is maybe an imperfection. So everybody's in. Wow, this is great. Because of the of this, this digital unlimited access to perfection and everything looks the same. And we combine technology, this for example is a screen print combined with a letter press, combined with a foil print, and so the packaging we do every little detail has a different analog technology to create a super special experience.
Also the musicians, ya know, they spend so much time and energy on the perfect recording. You want to continue that process. I think the super interesting thing is, and I think the solutions of many of the problem we have is how to combine the very best of the digital with all these wonderful things of analog. It changes, bringing back super reduced, wonderful established analog technologies that are not at all out of time, but it just, you know, needs another glimpse, another concept, another inspiration to to merge it with, with analog and digital and analog again, and to, tell the people, inspire people to think about it and teach them what has been done. So they can come up with new ways of using it. I am you know, I was born an optimist, but really I have to say that discovering that the next generation is so interested in, in old technologies and give them a complete new spin and that they how they behave and react to all the learnings with digital, make me very, very positive and optimistic that, they’re going to change a lot to the, to the better.
We have this incredible opportunity that the people who grew up digitally are so curious. They want to get their hands dirty. They want to understand how, for example, they come and say, “Can you print this?” we say, “Okay, yeah!” Interesting project, we are ready to print it.” They say, “Okay, here is the PDF.” I say, “Okay.” I look at the PDF, nice PDF but let’s make the other way. So maybe select a font. What kind of font, what kind of size? So, you know,
look at the characters. And then, we start building it with their hands step by step and we say, “Okay maybe we have found some nice symbols.” They really dive into it. They become creative and it opens up a new world where they can do something very, very special. You know, the fear was that maybe at a certain point they, they lose interest in everything tangible and they are totally satisfied with all their digital medium. But the opposite happened,
I think they are even more interested. And they, they learned of how they, they miss you know, the, the photo, the real photo album or their, their notebook or, you know, things they can touch and smell and there is no reason why we should we should not, you know, get them interested or excited about all these beautiful things. I can only recommend it if you're in love with somebody, and have hard times to get them excited about yourself, you know? Don’t send emails, you know, a handwritten letter or a typewriter letter maybe even a kissogram, this is one of my secret tricks. Put some color on the lips and then kiss on the letter and send it. It increases the chances, of, the person at least with think about what you’re saying or doing. This is also why we love analog technologies in reality so much because, human beings have five senses. And on the internet you can only see things and hear things you can never lick it,
touch it, you cannot smell it. And people in order to fall in love, to really build trust, to feel good, they need all their five senses triggered. That’s the only way how we work, how we can make the right decisions. So if you cut three senses completely out, I don’t think that people can be happy or can make the right decisions or even fall in love.
So it’s a smell memory kit. So, we have abstract smells in these little amples. So this is a smell you have never smelled before because we synthesize it in the lab. Sissel Tolaas is doing this, she is a smell artist from Norway living in Berlin, she’s amazing. So, anyhow. So you carry this little amulet with a smell you have never smelled in your pocket. And then there is a special moment you want to remember forever.
All you have to do is crack open the smell and smell it and from this moment on, this smell is forever connected with this emotional memory. So when I want to bring it back even years later and I reopen the ample and smell it, I close my eyes I have this emotion from the places. Somehow because I have so many observations of what this stuff does to people, how positive the impact can be, and how just watching them how their eyes open up, how they are fascinated it’s, it has it’s own magic to it and, you know, I tried many, many years to understand the magic but I gave up. I just always love to observe it. In my understanding, in my vision, it’s closely
connected to a very detailed understanding of analog technologies and to create the tools and messages and to educate the people to put the power back into the hands of the people. This is like your magazine back in the days, it’s just empowering people by explaining them, by treating them as experts by sharing the knowledge. And I think that’s, that’s interesting. To create a canvas and a tool so that people can start feeling it and combining it and playing with it. That would be my dream. I was thinking a lot about the magazine Popular Science of getting people excited about innovations and new stuff. I think we have to do exactly the same but in the other direction of point of view. To get the young generation excited about even a typewriter. The more we,
we tell them about things, they can come up with new ideas of combining it. I think there is such an interest of these things that are having public knowledge but are just hidden under some dust. You know, people always ask me, “Okay it’s a trend, right? It’s a retro trend. So it’s a short,
romantic comeback.” And I say, “Sorry guys but you know, the digital for me, that’s a trend.” We more and more find out the limitations of facebook. Beautiful idea, to connect the diaries of millions, billions of people, wonderful! But, you know, now we have learned all the side effects and at the end of the day what it is all about. So, this is just the beginning of something that for me, and this is crazy that it hasn’t happened so far is the real party is beginning to start. I am not able to accept that the only, you know, real business case for the internet is still selling the private data of the users, there’s a lot more opportunities. And you know, for you interesting of course, there’s a Polavision camera so… Basically for me, um, oh, it’s dusty. The Polavision camera is so important because
when I started to fall in love with Polaroid around the year 2002 or 2003, the Polavision was my holy grail. You know, I wanted, this was the thing I basically wanted to know more about right from the start. And I even made some, some videos of my children and I found out that some parts of this old system still works if you’re lucky. This it’s, it’s funny but I share a fascination for this technology and I think here somewhere behind…behind here? So this is, uh, the projector. Let’s see. What is this? Oh my god, there’s a lot of things. Ah, this is uh- um okay, anyhow. There’s a lot to discover! Kevin: Too many treasures! Doc: Too many treasures! Oh my god, this is a nice ooh. That is nice. Okay, okay.
So which system is this? So that’s the projector. Where is the plug? Where is- does it remove? So, we should be able to plug it in. Ladies and gentlemen, your original, original presentation manual is here. Somewhere I also have tapes. But let’s go down! Okay. So I hope I can still find them.
Kevin: Haha, you hope you can still find the tapes? Doc: Yeah! Because, you know, it’s all in the cellar cause the constant temperature is super important and I collected them maybe 20 years ago. Um, I know, I know, I was always waiting for you to call or Quinten Tarintino or somebody would say, “Wow let’s make a film! There’s a good project!” This is one of the most unique ways to capture, uh, film. So, let’s see. But I think I know where they are, let’s go down here. Please follow me, be careful. It’s not the official way, but it’s a shortcut. Alright, we’re going to find the legendary Polavision tapes.
Doc’s archaeological dig through the catacombs of Supersense unearthed armfuls of preserved Polavision tapes. Oh yeah, that is good! I had everything I needed to fire up my Polavision and resurrect a forgotten platform – I’d spent weeks acquiring a working projector and a working camera, and I’d flown over 4,000 miles to get the tapes. My precious. But I failed to account for the threat of one of retro technology’s most sinister villains. TSA. I did everything I could to pack and transport the Polavision camera safely, and I carried it with me instead of checking the bag, but I got flagged by security for manual inspection more than once. To be fair, the Polavision looks pretty weird on an x-ray scan,
so I can see why they opened up my bags to take a closer look. But somehow in the process of making sure I wasn’t bringing some retro ray-gun on a flight, they were as gentle as Lennie was with the bunny – and it turned my working Polavision camera into a non-working camera. I had… no idea what to do, and I didn’t have a backup. So I did the sensible thing and pretended the problem didn’t exist while I did a deep-dive into what actually happened to Polaroid – because how does a company that revolutionized the capture of memories become a distant memory themselves? A few months ago I made a video about the RCA Selectavision, which was an all-in gamble by RCA to do for movies what the vinyl record had done for music. The Selectavision’s discs were actually movies on vinyl records,
and RCA assumed that everyone would want to build a home theater experience with movies they could play anytime they wanted. It didn’t work out because the technology came out too late – the VCR format had already gained a foothold on the home video market. RCA lost $580 million, and in the blink of an eye a 20th century consumer electronics juggernaut was dead.
The story of the Polavision is eerily, and very weirdly, similar. Edwin Land’s early passion was in light polarization, which he essentially taught himself – he even dropped out of Harvard to get started on what would become the Polaroid Corporation. Land invented the first polarized sunglasses – a technology used in full color stereoscopic 3D movies and filtering light through windows. It also became a necessary component for LCD displays. Oh, and he also invented polarized goggles for military dogs, which is awesome. But something happened in 1940 that started Land on a path that would help define photography: his 3 year old daughter asked him why she couldn’t see the photo Edwin had just taken of her. World War II was a detour – Land developed several military innovations, including dark-adaptation goggles, guided missile technology, a stereoscopic print system using 3D polarized glasses called the Vectograph, the Corona and Samos photographic surveillance satellites to monitor enemy positions, and the optics for the Lockheed U-2 spy plane.
After the war, Land was able to return to his ideas about revolutionizing consumer photography – which resulted in 1948’s Model 95 Land Camera, Polaroid’s first foray into the world of self-developing film and one-touch cameras. Hungarian chemist Rott Andor had invented direct positive photography technology – also called Diffusion Transfer Reversal, or DTR – but Land invented a camera that required no expertise whatsoever to take a picture instantly. Anyone could just push a button and hold a developed photo in their hand just moments later. The Polaroid story deserves about a 12-episode documentary series – from the Model 95 to the Model 20 Swinger, to 1963’s Polacolor instant color film, to dry-developing film and the SX-70 – and beyond. Land himself had 533 patents, and in
1963 he won the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award given to a civilian. Oh - and he kind of invented the smartphone. The SX-70 was the first ever instant single-lens reflex camera, which allows the photographer to look through the lens to see exactly what will be captured. In 1970, Land gave a factory tour for the SX-70 that included a vision of the iPhone 37 years before the actual device: “They were a long way from the dream which I used to talk about then of being able to take a wallet out of my pocket and perhaps open the wallet, press a button, close the wallet and have the picture.” “We are still a long way from the concept, the realization of the concept of a camera that would be, oh, like the telephone. Something that you use all day long,
whenever an occasion arises, in which you want to make sure that you cannot trust your memory. Or when you want to record any object of great interest to you or any beautiful scene.” You can understand why a man like Edwin Land would want to bring the same simplicity and quality that he’d brought to photography to the emerging medium of home video. The problem was how to do it. Land spent 20 years dreaming of how to make it happen – and then 10 more years of development within Polaroid’s hallowed and secretive halls. Popular Science could only make an educated guess as to how the Polavision system actually worked.
It relied on the additive-color process, which works when… “light coming through one primary filter is added to light coming through a second and third primary filter to produce a color that represents an integration of all three primary colors.” So the red filter passes red light, the blue filter passes blue, the green filter passes green and they’re recombined to form a color duplicate of the original image. The genius of the Polavision was imprinting the filters on the film base itself – so it had microscopic stripes of color in triplets, backed by a layer of light-sensitive silver-halide emulsion, and a microscopically-thin positive image-receiving layer. Additive color systems weren’t new, in fact, they were really old. French scientist Louis Ducos du Hauron described the principles of additive color reproduction in 1869 and the first color cinematography utilized the additive process. When Technicolor debuted in 1916, it was an additive color process that required a special projector with a prism-beam splitter to expose black-and-white negative film behind a red and green filter. This caused tremendous
light loss resulting in a darker image - and light was a huge problem for the Polavision. By 1922, Technicolor had pivoted to subtractive color processes in which the color was physically printed on the film by photographing it behind green and red filters and then processing it in a lab. As their subtractive color process evolved it became famous for bringing The Wizard Of Oz, Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, and Fantasia to life. Land believed that the Polavision project could return Polaroid to its former glory as an innovator. In his 1977 annual report, he stated that Polavision represented,
“...perhaps [the] most important cycle rooted in the earliest history of the company.” He considered it a breakthrough to get to “living images” from still images. And while industry leaders overwhelmingly thought the home movie market was still unpopular and therefore unprofitable – including a spokesman for Eastman Kodak who noted that movies were only 2.6 percent of all photographic sales – Land insisted that, “Polavision is not movies; it is a way to relate ourselves to life and each other.” In “Land’s Polaroid: A Company and the man who invented it” former Polaroid employee and author Peter C. Wensberg explains that when Chicago manufacturer Bell & Howell dropped out of building the Polavision player due to their frustration with constant design changes from Polaroid, it would end up being manufactured by a small company called Eumig right here in Austria. So by sheer coincidence we managed to come to the true source of Polavision.
The player and camera were sold together for $700 or over $3,700 in today’s money. And just about everyone at Polaroid except for Edwin Land thought the Polavision was a really bad idea. I found an incredible blog post from Paul Giambarba, a Polaroid branding expert and the creator of the iconic Polaroid color stripes. Paul’s post is from 2004 and thankfully it was
preserved by Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. He wrote, “If there's one thing I can remember about these days it's [Executive Vice President] Stan Calderwood's opposition to this product that contributed, I feel certain, to his leaving the company. "Jee-zus, Gee-am," he would say in his Chugwater, Wyoming, twang," the goddam movie camera business accounts for only three per cent of the entire photographic market and Land insists on getting into it." Giambarba went on to say, “I tried using the product but it was obviously a turkey compared to anything I was using that Kodak offered and a positive disaster when compared to my 8mm Bolex.” Okay, internally Polaroid employees were not bullish on Polavision – but what did consumers think? The headline for Anne Hillerman’s July 21, 1978 article for Gannett News Service stated, “Instant Movies Pose Several Disadvantages” – and it only got worse from there. Her list of complaints included the camera only being capable of shooting Polavision Phototapes and the Player only playing those same tapes, so there was no flexibility with the products. Technically,
you could play the film on a Super 8 mm projector… if you broke it open and destroyed the tape. She also mentions “…it’s considerably more expensive than the average movie set-up.” Unlike standard home movies, it can’t be edited, there’s no way to create one longer than 2 ½ minutes, the images can’t be erased, and the tapes can’t be reused. But it made beautiful images, right, right? “...the quality of the picture itself is grainy and the colors heavily slanted toward blues and magentas.”
Even in Everett H Ortner’s May 1978 followup review in Popular Science he said, “In image quality, Polavision is inferior in almost every way to regular super-8 film.” It was… a total disaster. To give you a sense of how quickly Polaroid’s marketing panicked at the awful market response, they released a full page newspaper ad in November 1978 listing “48 Legitimate business reasons for buying Polaroid Instant Movies” including uses for Adoption agencies to introduce children to prospective parents, Firefighters documenting violations, Dance instruction, Bridal shops, and Detectives surveilling suspects. When you have to tell people what to do with your product… it’s already too late. You have to understand that Polaroid shifted totally away from the end customer to all this professional usage. So for that then this for the academics,
for law enforcement. So that was their big business. They they drifted away from the customers. And the same problem that, you know, most likely all companies or big companies have, they don't have a really a, a relationship to their customers anymore. For me, the Polavision is still an incredible success of showing how to basically dream up and develop a technology and do impossible things. Maybe, sometimes the technology is not a success at the point of time that it was expected to be a success. And also I have to distinguish between a commercial success and many other levels of success. For example,
it’s a success that the two of us are sitting here. It’s just only because of this device. They shut down Polavision manufacturing in 1979, and after selling their equipment they tallied a $68 million loss. Wensber’s book says that Land’s personal losses came in at $660 million because Polaroid stock experienced a freefall from 1972 to 1974 that wiped out $4.4 billion dollars of shareholder value – so Polavision’s problems hitting the balance sheet came on the heels of a tremendous downturn for the business. Polavision is scapegoated as being the product that took down the Polaroid Corporation, but they were still going strong in 1991 with peak revenue of $3 billion – that’s 12 years after the death of Polavision.
The real casualty of Polavision was the man who started it all. Everyone from the board down to shareholders and hobbyists began to wonder whether Polaroid needed new leadership going into the next decade. Polavision’s failure had just… eroded market confidence in Land’s ability to run the company. He resigned as Chief Executive Officer
in April of 1980 and retired as Chairman on July 27, 1982. And by April 30 1985, 75-year-old Edwin Land sold the last of his Polaroid stock – and with that, he concluded a lifelong journey of almost unprecedented innovation and success, having run his company longer than Thomas Edison, Henry Ford or George Eastman. This unpredictable picture that is even dependent on the temperature, you know, that has an incredible kind of fascination. Same will happen with the Polavision. These movies will be far away from perfect. Or what Edwin Land, you know, spent so many years to achieve. But nevertheless, it would be, you know, many people feel that this is most likely the most interesting video film they have ever seen in a long time because of its chemical whatever explosions, storytelling, crazy approach.
On March 1, 1991, Edwin Land died at the age of 81. And a decade later, the Polaroid he created was gone. After years of failed products, a failure to diversify, and a failure to adapt to the new age of digital photography, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in October 2001. And in 2008, a year after the iPhone debuted, Doc and his partners founded The Impossible Project to prevent Polaroid from disappearing once and for all. The first step was that I basically I tried to convince Polaroid to not give up hope or faith, on their own material and to. I had the idea of crazy idea to, to make an online shop for Polaroid film. Because for me, it was so hard to find out. You know what film is used for? What camera?
It was super hard to find the film in retail, so I thought, this is a perfect product to present online because and all the people looking for the same answers that I would, you know, they could, they could build a beautiful global shop, for the films and Polaroid just wasn't interested. But they said, you know, if you want to do it and if you place a minimum order, you know you can do it. You have the global right to build an online shop, whatever, whoever needs that. So that's,
that's how it started and what we did. And, we found out that, you know, this was a super idea because more and more people had problems to get the frames at the retailer. And at the same time, Google, you know, developed them, the, the searching machines. So we had more and more customers from all over the world. And in that process, we became more and more important to Polaroid. And I visited the factory many times, in order to make special editions in order to find, outdated material. So I was there on a regular basis, and I started buying, last production runs.
And, you know, I, I was always fascinated by the factory. So I visited many times and then built my pieces over four years. I had the special case that I spent four years to understand the business case. I had all the customers. I, I know all the, the problems in the factory. I was the only one talking to the people producing the film. So, but nevertheless, Polaroid would never give me the factory because, all the managers are afraid that this idiot crazy guy from Vienna maybe succeed in something that they declared to be totally impossible.
And then I received the invitation to the closing event in 2008. It was the first time they even recognized how many people still love their product, but it was too late. You know, the management decision has been taken a long time ago. It was basically a very, very, difficult negotiations until the day that the FBI invaded the Polaroid headquarters in Minneapolis and the whole, you know, management board was taken into custody because of a huge, tax infringement. This is still, the spark, and the good message of it all if, if you are stubborn enough and do it again and again and believe it and go on nerves and write the letters and don't accept the no for no, it can happen, you know, with or without the FBI, you know. You know, when for example, you know, when I bought the last Polaroid factory and you know we had been writing with friends and family and then somebody asked me, “Okay so what are you doing?” I said, “Yeah we bought the last Polaroid factory.” and
everyone was like, “O-Okay…huh. Interesting, mhm.” and that was usually the end of the conversation. Then later when I pulled a Polaroid camera and took some pictures and just put them on the table it totally turned so even without understanding, or you know, it does something. It’s uh, it’s it has an incredible power maybe because so many genius minds find it so hard to establish it, you know, like, Polaroid you know. We are talking about thousands of the best scientists working for years in order to do something like that. I think it has this magic and this power to have a picture within the moment, that for me that was the most fascinating stuff, you know. Not only for photography but,
you know, for taking portraits. You don’t take a picture, you share a picture because you know, you don’t take it away to a black box but you know, right away you have some object on the table. An object that smells, that is unpredictable and Polaroid never saw it. I had a living, operational relic of Edwin Land’s legacy, but then it got busted. Doc had a solution: I could just use one of his MANY WORKING
POLAVISION CAMERAS. We tested a few of the tapes and got them to expose. So, I was saved from disaster once again – and I moved on to the next step, which was testing Doc’s Polavision player. I had a working Polavision player at home, but having one here in Austria would allow us to watch a tape after filming and then film again if it hadn’t recorded properly. The first attempt ended with a tape not only NOT playing, but getting completely jammed inside the player. Doc tapped his network of tech wizards to find Punjo Hofer – who could only come to repair the projector the next day. Until then, we explored another one of Doc’s analog technology rescue missions – the offices of the world’s only remaining peel-apart instant packfilm.
So this is a very important place for me personally, because, you know, we we had this huge factory in the Netherlands in Enschede. And they always told me, you need these giant machines in order to produce instant film. And now this is the antithesis of, you know, that it's possible to produce instant film even in this small, beautiful setup with just a small team of dedicated people, who, who basically are ready to think out of the box. And Chris, he basically came up with a real working strategy to turn my dream of basically a handcrafted film into a reality. So originally we always made, like, a pre-assembled, film. So you get the
box. Everything was ready to go. Put it in your camera. But that meant we had to do a lot of the steps in the darkroom under seats. Infrared light only with infrared goggles. And so the idea was, how can we create something where, the customer can do without a darkroom, without a changing bag in the light, but the film is still protected. So that's the DIY kit, basically. The films that are in an envelope, it was a special seal so that no light gets in, but they have the leader, which allows them to then attach everything else to it. They have, the cartridge that can all be assembled in the light. And then in the end there's a simple loading procedure and you have your shots.
You know, I think the, the principle of public science to really treat the customers as an interested partner, to show him all the details going deep into the technology, how it works, and even, you know, spark his creativity and inspire him by building it. I think that's, it's not outdated like the magazines from the 50s or 60. I think this is a very, very modern approach. And,
I see a lot of potential of getting people excited about the technology without hiding anything, but, you know, making them the producer on their own, at least in our dreams. You know, imagine it's, you know, there's still hundreds, thousands of these cameras out there and you can get them super cheap on eBay, and they have incredible lenses, you know, it's just unbelievable. And without us doing it, you know, you basically can can, you know, throw into trash. And there are some people trying to to convert the film system But, you know, I think to really find a way to keep this alive by in a new approach will be super cool. Kevin: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Doc: It makes super sense, my friend.
Doc tried to convince Fujifilm to continue manufacturing peel-apart film, but when they politely said they weren’t interested, Doc decided he would do it himself. By hand. Doc and I went outside to get a nice photo together with their One Instant DIY packfilm, and then I screwed it up. I didn’t pull the photo out straight, so only half of the image was properly covered in reagent and Doc was missing completely. But he genuinely loved it. It started with my grandmother. Whenever the cake, something went wrong. I love them more because it's the unpredictable. It's the special stuff. This will always remind this of this moment. It's so funny.
He wasn’t kidding. I found the photo on his desk the next day. We took a second photo and this time Chris Holmquist handled the pull and it came out perfect and I kept this one. And then Doc showed us a little Polaroid magic trick which is a way to transfer the photo onto a paper towel.
So this is hard to replace by digital, right? Kevin: Yeah. It's impossible. Yeah, it it's the smell. It is so great. I love the smell.
We officially ended our Supersense tour with Chris showing us the pottery studio where all the dishes for the restaurant are handmade, a fully functioning darkroom complete with infrared goggles, and the linotype room – it’s what revolutionized the newspaper industry by allowing lines of text to be typed and cast for printing which replaced having to do letter-by-letter manual typesetting. The next day Punjo took the dead Polavision Player apart, replaced the bulb, unstuck the tape, and cleaned every tiny electronic detail inside – and after 3 hours of work… … it was still dead. Which meant we’d have to fly blind. There was no way to know whether anything we shot would
develop until we got back to the United States and I tried it on my functioning projector. I felt like we just could not catch a break, but then Punjo fired up a custom video jukebox he created that plays music videos off of vinyl records – which is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in my life. Doc explained that our best chance of getting any footage to develop was to use the last 40 seconds of the film, because in his experience these old tapes still had enough reagent to get to develop the physical center of the tape. When the tape first starts rolling, it’s furthest from the spools, so the plan was to burn about 1 minute and 45 seconds of video to get to the tape closest to both the spools and the remaining reagent. He also gave me a manual for the Polavision camera that was missing from my eBay purchases and not available anywhere online until now. I scanned and uploaded this version
which is translated in 14 languages and is now available for everyone on Archive.org. But before we finally set out on the Polavision shoot, our own seemingly impossible project, I surprised Doc with the Popular Science Magazine that kicked off this entire adventure. The issue featuring the Polavision. Now I have to see the magazine. Oh, my Lord, I'm staring at it. Pocket cameras, instant movie system, hollywood projects. It's wonderful. A lot of smoking. A lot of smoking ads.
A lot of smoking ads. Oh, they're all I- Oh, my god. Oh, god. Oh, this is really detailed. “Paint like a Pro”. It’s handcraft, science, cars. Wonderful. Truly wonderful. We had one day left, and one opportunity to make a Polavision film. So the question was… what do we actually shoot? What’s distinctly Viennese? What’s something that marries my passion as an American with the proud people of Austria? HOT DOGS.
There’s ongoing debate about where exactly the hot dog was invented – and what constitutes a hot dog at all. Frankfurt and Coburg in Germany both lay claim, as does Ancient Rome with the legend that Emperor Nero’s chef Gaius was the first to stuff the emptied intestines of a roasted pig with ground meat and spices. But if you’ve ever spent any time in Vienna, you’d know that you can’t walk two blocks without coming across a Würstelstand – so I wanted to experience the original: Würstelstand LEO has been serving wieners since 1928 – so I decided what better way to honor YouTube, Vienna, and the Polavision than to create a tier list ranking of some of the oldest hot dogs in the world? It may sound like a frivolous use for the precious, near-extinct resource that is the Polavision tape. But I wanted to use the Polavision the way
it was intended – I wanted to feel the excitement of making a short film and deal with all the limitations that came with the camera. Imagine it’s 1977, you’ve just gotten your Polavision, and you’re going on vacation to Vienna. Frank from down the street showed the neighborhood a slide show of his Austrian vacation a few years ago – so you want to do something that isn’t just showing the picturesque postcard sites. You’ve got video. You’re in control. And you want to show everyone what
it was like to be there. You want to relay an experiential moment in time, and you also want to capture it for yourself – and be a little artistic doing it. This is why we film hot dogs.
So I bought 5 of them to eat and to rank – a Käsekrainer, which is a cheese dog, a classic frankfurter, a Chicago style, an “Amigo,” and a Spezl with a pretzel bun. We found some discarded benches from a restaurant and set the stage for a Polavision hot dog masterpiece. We followed Doc’s instructions to run through the first 1 minute and 55 seconds of the tape to get that prime 40 seconds at the end. It meant we had to time every individual shot with a
stopwatch to make sure we wouldn’t go over 40 seconds in total – so the shots consisted of taking a bite of each hot dog and then ranking it on the tier list. Once we finished the first tape, we repeated the process all over again with a new tape. … and neither one worked at all. They still showed “UNEXPOSED.”
But I had to keep trying, which meant that I had to keep eating hot dog after hot dog. The guy at Würstelstand LEO never asked why I kept coming back to buy the same 5 hot dogs over and over, or why I looked a little sicker every time. Upbeat music We ended up recording hot dog tier rankings on 10 preserved Polavision tapes – but only one actually exposed. The other nine are frozen forever in time – without
even the hope of a blurry, stained image of hot dog consumption inside. And even our modern tech failed – our brand new DSLR camera overheated in the 90 degree Vienna sun, so we lost one of the takes documenting our seemingly hopeless attempt at making a Polavision film. So after all that, we packed up and flew back to the United States with our hopes and dreams resting upon a single exposed Polavision tape. Okay, I’ve recorded everything you’ve seen so far before playing the tape so that I could end it with you and I experiencing the big reveal together, just like it was 1977 and we were crowded around the Polavision Player. So, now let’s take the only exposed tape from our Polavision Hot Dog Tier List shoot to see if any of it develops.
Please, some of it develop. Here we go. It’s fired up, you can hear the film spinning through the projector, it should be applying the reagent to the film and then allowing it to dry before then revealing the images of our legendary voyage to Vienna. Or revealing anything, hopefully. We’re gonna assume the first minute and fifty seconds or so will be blank but the last forty seconds should have something. Maybe?
Not looking good. Nothing. Completely blank, it didn’t work. Ugh. 2 minutes and 35 seconds of a blank, black screen. Oh, well. I thought it was stuck too. Oh, man.
Maybe Analog Resurgence really did have the last working Polavision tape, and Edwin Land’s ambitious attempt to bring home movies to the masses has died for the second and for the final time. But you know, Doc taught me that we’re at a critical crossroads with countless forms of analog tech, not just Polavision. The people who know how to use and maintain the real, tangible, physical ways of creating meaningful and soulful objects are being erased by time, one by one. We need to decide what’s worth preserving – fast – and someone has to be the shepherd, even if it seems irrational. Absolutely no one thought that saving an obsolete Polaroid factory made any sense. That’s why it was called The Impossible Project. And not only
did it succeed – in 2020 they officially obtained the rights to the name Polaroid, so The Impossible Project came full circle and is now just called… Polaroid. I traveled all the way to Vienna in what ended up being a futile attempt to shoot a video on something that’s just destined to remain in the past – but I came back with something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. Doc owns one of only 5 known functioning 20 inch x 24 inch Polaroid cameras. It’s the largest Polaroid instant photo in the world, and you can see that they’re sold out on the Supersense website. That’s because they only had enough film left for two more photos. And Doc offered to use one of those two remaining shots to take a portrait of me holding two Polavision cameras as a memento of our improbable journey together.
Because it’s a reminder that technology is not about what it allows you to make, it’s about who it allows you to meet. See you in the future. It’s, it’s an incredible chance that not a company or the industry has to lead it but, you know, the people themselves can lead the change and the revolution and the new approach of doing it, because industry nowadays is so slow and not innovative at all that they will follow, you know, the demand, but you know who creates the demand.
So it's, I think there is a big opportunity there.
2024-10-26 16:21
