These are freeze frames from a 1970 film directed by Bill Warriner discovered and displayed as a video transfer by Christopher Bonanos on his blog Polaroidland. Chris is the author of the recently published Instant, The Story of Polaroid. The film may be seen as well on Harry McCracken's Technologizer/Time magazine blog.
I've enhanced the images from their faded state. You may click on this link to view the film, which is approximately 16.5 minutes in length. Its title is The Long Walk and it was presented at Polaroid Corporation's annual meeting in 1970 at the Norwood plant.
Edwin Land is seen walking down the steps of 549 Technology Square, Cambridge. His formal office was on the third and top floor, though he spent most of his time in his lab on Osborne Street
Boarding the helicopter to overfly new plants and the site for a huge color negative film factory in New Bedford
Land supplies the voice-over narrative in the film
Overview of the entire Technology Square complex, Cambridge
Polaroid's Norwood facility, designed by architect I.M. Pei
Print coating materials manufactured here
Polaroid's first factory for film, Route 128, Waltham
Needham distribution plant. One of ten such facilities in the USA
Another view of Technology Square, Cambridge. Land's office was in the small building just above, right
Pilot plant in Waltham for producing color negative film planned for New Bedford
125 acres in New Bedford, site of future color negative factory
Norwood complex of factories
Camera assembly plant, Norwood, is the first ever integrated camera plant
Dr. Land ends the film with his explanation of what the new SX-70 camera will do for photography and for all of us in the bargain. The SX-70 will be like the telephone you use all day long, a camera you would use as you would a pencil or your eyeglasses. A camera that will fit in your pocket.
Considering the 1970 date, this is prophetic and describes today's proliferation of camera-phones. That the SX-70 would fit in a pocket was a stretch of both pocket and imagination. Not mentioned was the staggering cost to do it all: a billion dollars plus another billion for the SX-70, according to author Christopher Bonanos. While SX-70 was an impressive technological achievement, the price to develop it and get it in production, along with Polavision, Land's insistence on instant-movie film and camera, brought this once proud and debt-free corporation to its eventual ruin [a PDF file].
The future was digital photography, the future distress sales of Polaroid's industrial real estate, bankruptcy, fraud and jail time for a latter day CEO, golden parachutes for the last gang of honchos, and a dishonorable loss of pensions and health care for those who made Polaroid what it was in its golden years.
An American tragedy. Land's Impossible Dream.
