Instant:The Story of Polaroid | Christopher Bonanos | Talks at Google

"Instant photography at the push of a button!" During the 1960s and '70s, Polaroid was the coolest technology company on earth. Like Apple, it was an innovation machine that cranked out one must-have product after another. Led by its own visionary genius founder, Edwin Land, Polaroid grew from a 1937 garage start-up into a billion-dollar pop-culture phenomenon. Instant tells the remarkable tale of Land's one-of-a-kind invention-from Polaroid's first instant camera to hit the market in 1948, to its meteoric rise in popularity and adoption by artists such as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, and Chuck Close, to the company's dramatic decline into bankruptcy in the late '90s and its unlikely resurrection in the digital age. Instant is both an inspiring tale of American ingenuity and a cautionary business tale about the perils of companies that lose their creative edge.

[rephlex]

11 years later, instant film is coming back more and more. Awesome!

[cshubs]

I learned a couple years ago that Dr. Land is a cousin! He's from my grandfather's generation. He died just before I graduated from school. He attended my dad's bar mitzvah. Land's father sponsored my grandfather's emigration to America.

[DavidJackTumusiime]

Nearly everything you need to know about the Polarid Company is in this excellent talk. And it got me to Talks at Google.

[danner]

I love the Polaroid 600 camera I found in my parents attic, I bought film through the tiny company, 'Impossible project', expensive and takes a while to develop compared to Polaroid film, but the results are excellent and authentic. It is an amazing little thing.

[donkeypoo]

really interesting video. ive been shooting on Polaroid cameras for about 3 years now and i learned a lot of cool info from this. one non-polaroid thing I want to mention though when you brought up Vinyl LP's at around 41:30 you said it was DJs who brought them back into popularity, is that Punk Rock and Hardcore bands never stopped putting out music on Vinyl LP's and LP's. They're the ones who kept that format alive.

[ralphhoskins]

What a fantastic talk, , , I love Polaroid and shoot their pictures almost every day..

[PictMeIn]

Great video. I love it. The passion and emotional sense of the speaker is remarkable. Hope will have the opportunity to meet him at the CES in few weeks.

[monochromebluess]

Superb presentation. Well structured and a great story. This guy knows Polaroid. Love the 180 camera ( have the less professional 250 model myself) story

[thecusinsgodinez]

I watched the whole thing and let me tell you it was great and I learned a lot :D

[zakUSDedelman]

Such an interesting story and well told, also. Thanks, Google.

[lllllREDACTEDlllll]

He was also on the SR-75 and U2 spy plane team. Dopest cameras ever made.

[phillipgaley]

To me, it was so very absorbing a picture of life with which I had some familiarity, . . . I did not see or hear that.

That early Land camera would sit open shutter for twenty minutes, for low-light shots, . . . and then, suddenly snap closed.

[vreloaded]

That awkward moment when Polaroid predicts Instagram.

[aprat]

I can't listen to this. He smacks his lips after every sentence.