Every day sightseers make their way to lower Manhattan to take pictures of the ruins of the World Trade Centre. Many hold their cameras at arm's length, studying the image on tiny screens. For this is the age of the digital camera, when pictures can be scrutinised while snapping, then edited on screen, sent to friends and relatives, and printed out from distant PCs.
The digital revolution has come upon the world of photography pretty quickly. I can remember just three years ago sending my first digital images by e-mail attachment - from a hotel room in Mongolia - to The Irish Times picture desk. You can bet there is hardly a correspondent today in Peshawar or the Panshir Valley who does not have a digital camera in his or her equipment.
All revolutions sweep over the old, and this one is no exception. Up to now the concept of instant photography was synonymous with the word Polaroid, defined in Webster's Dictionary as "the first brand of instant camera". The clunky Polaroid apparatus was - and still is to some extent - popular at the beach or at weddings, and as a tool of estate agents and insurance adjusters.
But on Monday the Polaroid company filed for bankruptcy at a court in Wilmington, Delaware, citing debts of almost $1 billion (€1.1 billion). For too long, it seems, the "pod had got the nod" at Polaroid headquarters. The pod is the little sealed cachet inside the Polaroid camera which bursts when a picture is taken and spreads developing liquid over a chemical-coated negative, allowing the film to develop instantly. The saying "the pod gets the nod" is popular among workers at Polaroid, according to the Boston Herald, and meant simply that no other technology got full company backing if it was not centred round the core business of instant cameras which used the pod.
It was the undoing of the company but it is not hard to understand the reluctance to move away from a sure-fire winner. Invented more than half a century ago by Harvard University dropout Edwin H. Land, the Polaroid quickly became the number-one instant camera in the world and held that position for several decades.
Edwin Land was a brilliant innovator, second only to Edison. He registered 535 patents for inventions which resulted in 3-D glasses, the U2 spy plane and glare-free sunglasses with lenses that could polarise light, that is make light rays move in parallel. He created a sensation when he introduced instant photographic imaging at the Optical Society of America meeting in New York on February 21st, 1947.
"While-you-wait" photography using cameras with built-in processing was not new. It had been used by itinerant beach and street photographers since the 19th century. Older readers may recall the rain-coated photographer with camera and tripod who plyed his trade on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin for many decades. But the technique was impractical for consumer use because of the messiness of handling liquid chemicals.
A year after dazzling the Optical Society, Land put his one-step Polaroid Model 95 on sale in Boston for $89.50 in 1948. It was instantly hailed as a revolution in photography unparalleled since the advent of roll film. Polaroid achieved $5 million in sales within 12 months.
By 1969 Polaroid sales exceeded $500 million. In 1972 the company introduced the SX-70, the first camera to let photographers watch colour pictures develop before their eyes on exposure to light. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Polaroid was one of the "Nifty Fifty" bellweather favourites on Wall Street. It seemed growth would continue forever. By 1994, three years after Land died, aged 91, sales topped a staggering $2.3 billion.
But the slide started in 1996 and by 2000 sales had dropped to $1.85 billion. Already damaged by one-hour photo developing shops, the company could not compete with high-quality digital cameras. Polaroid actually was a pioneer in developing the digital camera in the mid-1990s but the pod still got the nod; not enough resources were put into developing and marketing the new thing. The creation of two digital photographic printers, Opal and Onyx, came too late. The end was as spectacular as the beginning.
In the first half of this year Polaroid's sales fell 25 per cent and it lost $200 million. The company's shares, worth $28 just 18 months ago, last traded at 28 cents.
On top of everything the company was struggling vainly with the legacy of $900 million in debt run up in 1988 to finance an employee stock plan and preferred stock option introduced to shake off a hostile bid from Walt Disney's nephew, Roy.
Polaroid Corporation is still the worldwide leader in instant imaging and supplies and sells sunglasses, digital imaging technology and secure identification systems worldwide. There are still millions of Polaroid cameras around, ensuring demand for instant film for years to come. However, having failed to find a buyer its seems that the once-great company will now be sold off piecemeal.
One-stop photography is a brilliant idea whose time has not yet run out. But it is being left behind by new inventions and its fall was probably inevitable. As Edwin Land himself once said: "Nature has neither rewards or punishments, only consequences."
