Word: polaroid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years since the first Polaroid cameras began developing and printing their own black-and-white snapshots in a matter of seconds. Though photographers have been yearning ever since for someone to produce an equally swift, self-processing color film, most chemists agreed that the job was incredibly difficult. It seemed improbable that it would ever be accomplished...
...very complexity of the problem was what appealed most to Dr. Edwin H. Land and his colleagues at the Polaroid Corp. in Cambridge, Mass. This week they began to market the improbable. Polacolor, a self-processing color film. Now, just 50 seconds after the snap of a shutter, a surgeon can record a sharp color shot of a delicate operation; an alert military reconnaissance pilot can produce a revealing picture of an enemy operation; a doting parent can turn out a portrait of his child in remarkably accurate tints...
Linked Molecules. The new color film can be used in most Polaroid cameras, but it depends on new chemicals, designed to work with the precision of molecular machines. There are three layers of emulsion containing fine, light-sensitive grains of silver halide. The grains in the top layer are sensitive to blue light; those in the middle are sensitive to green; those in the bottom layer are sensitive to red. When a many-colored picture is focused on the film, the blue, green and red components of the light that has entered the camera form three latent (undeveloped) images...
Conventional color films work in much the same way. But just below each layer of Polacolor's silver halide is a layer containing strange double molecules synthesized by Polaroid's chemists. The molecules are shaped roughly like dumbbells. Each of them has at one end a submolecule of photographic developer. At the other end is a submolecule of brilliantly colored dye. Connecting the dye and developer is a strong chain of carbon atoms...
...color and see the picture almost immediately will be of enormous advantage in many dangerous situations. No enemy of the U.S. is likely to enjoy this advantage for years; in spite of frantic efforts, says Land, the Russians have not yet succeeded in copying even black-and-white Polaroid film...