Technology gave rise to a true creative explosion in the late 1970s, but the idea—or rather, the desire—for the instant had also taken hold. That brings us to Polaroid, which in 1977 was still led by its founder and inventor of instant cameras, Edwin Land. In essence, Land wondered whether that special quality of his cameras could extend to video, and the answer was the Polavision system. Unfortunately, things did not go well for Land and his brand-new creation, to the point that it almost destroyed the company.
The promise of instant images
1977. Commodore PET, Apple II, Tandy TRS-80, Atari 2600, the premiere of Star Wars! What a busy year... but the public wanted more: more color, more sound, more 'everything' so to speak. Anyone could record their home shorts in 8mm, and the VHS-Betamax war was about to explode. However, in April of that year, Polaroid founder Edwin Land gave a conference in front of thousands of company stockholders, and openly announced that the era of 'living and immediately visible images' was within reach. Land said this not only as a sort of prediction, but to indicate that Polaroid would be at the forefront and center of that trend with a new product: Polavision.
How Polavision worked
Polavision was an instant video system based on three components: the Polavision camera, its dedicated cassettes, and a special player that behaved almost like a projector. The promise was simple but gigantic: see all your home movies in minutes, without having to send them to a store for processing. Each cassette could hold about three minutes of video (similar to a Super 8 film), and Polaroid also explored the possibility of positioning Polavision for industrial use, once again emphasizing time savings (for example, recordings could be played at a construction site instead of sending the film elsewhere).
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Omc2Z0fhpNAWhy it failed
So what happened? Analysts of the time suggest that despite the announcement, Polavision was an obsolete system from the very start The first VHS videocassette recorder reached US stores in August 1977, and from then on, both Betamax and VHS swept away everything in their path in terms of video quality and duration. Another weakness of Polavision was that its initial version could not record audio Although support was planned for later revisions, the first-generation product was mute.
Moreover, Polavision had a much poorer image quality than expected. Due to the filtering layer on the film, which only allowed green, red, or blue light to pass through separately, the final result was very dark (equivalent to ISO 40), blurry, and with a gray tone covering everything. Add to that the impossibility of erasing and reusing cassettes, the high cost of the system (Super 8 was better, cheaper, and with audio), and its closed profile that prevented playback on a traditional projector or a television, and Polavision's fate was sealed.
The disaster
Polavision became an absolute technological and financial disaster for Polaroid, creating a loss of 68.5 million dollars (almost 300 million adjusted for inflation) and the layoff of 2,000 people. As expected, all responsibility fell on Edwin Land, and nothing was ever the same for that pioneer, who resigned his executive position in 1980 and left the company in July 1982.
