In an age where instant photography means whipping out a smartphone and immediately sharing the digital image with friends online, a boxy camera that produces self-developing prints seems like a huge backward step. But that’s exactly what instant film cameras provide, and a revamped Polaroid has announced a new model called the Now.
The Polaroid Corporation was founded by Edwin Land in 1937, a company that originally sold polarized sunglasses. But Land went on to develop a “magic camera” that produced instant prints, which was described in a 1973 issue of Popular Science as “perhaps the most fiendishly clever invention in the history of photography.”
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