Dye Diffusion Transfer Process: The SX-70 Polaroid

"I think this camera can have the same impact as the telephone on the way people live." - Edwin H. Land, co-founder of  the Polaroid Corporation (Saturday Evening Post 1975) 

The dye diffusion transfer process, also known as "instant film" had made its first appearance in black and white in the 1940s by the Polaroid Corporation, but instant film had not become such an important cultural artifact as we know it now until the SX-70 camera model and its new no-mess color film hit the market in 1972.

Image of an SX-70 (Jim 2009)

What made the SX-70 so popular and unique, and led to it becoming embedded in American culture for decades was that it removed the additional step of sending undeveloped film to a third party for one's images as one would have to do with Kodachrome. In addition, the SX-70 made instant photography even easier than with previous models by removing the necessity of having to touch sticky prints, paper wrappers, and chemical-laden negatives to throw away (Time Magazine 1972).

The Polaroid company has an interesting history, starting from the co-founder Edwin H. Land. He was born in 1926 near Norwich Connecticut and was an 18 year old Harvard student by 1928, but dropped-out to pursue his own ideas and experiments with polarized light (Time Magazine 1972). This resulted in Land setting up the Polaroid Corporation in 1937 "in a former tobacco wholesaler's building on Boston's Columbus Avenue with the plan of selling Detroit's automakers on the idea of putting his polarizers in the sun visors and headlights of all new cars. Land was convinced that the reduced glare would make night driving much safer. But manufacturers noted that the polarizing sheets deteriorated when exposed to heat, and they showed little interest" (Time Magazine 1972). Land also marketed Polaroid nonglare sunglasses in that same year, which fared much better with consumers and is a feature on many sunglasses even today. The company did not see much growth until World War II, by means of the production of goggles, glasses and filters, but the boost lasted only until the war ended in 1945 (Time Magazine 1972). 

Polaroid taken by Edwin Land (Saturday Evening Post 1975) 

In 1947 the company lost $2,000,000 and Land and his engineers began producing cameras using the peel-and-develop film, first in black-and-white, and then in color (Time Magazine 1972, Edwards 2012). After the SX-70 was developed, the company continued to make additional models and upgraded them. Land lived on Brattle Street and worked 2 miles away in Cambridge, MA by 1972, and he died in 1991, ten years before the company's first bankruptcy filing in 2001 (Time Magazine 1972, Edwards 2012).

The camera itself "[contains] 200 transistors and a complex of moving mirrors, light sensors, gears and solenoids," and the film was "a layered sandwich of chemicals that Polaroid insiders called 'the goo'" and "sheathed in unscratchable plastic and backed by a thin coating of titanium" (Time Magazine 1972, Edwards 2012). The SX-70 measures about about 11/10 inches x 4 1/5 inches x 7 inches, weighs 26 ounces, and in 1972 each picture cost approximately 45¢ per picture (Time Magazine 1972).

Below is an illustrated schematic of SX-70 film during exposure.

(Jim 2009)

The camera and film became so popular that by 1976 Kodak was developing its own version of instant film (Time Magazine 1976). While it is true that each Polaroid photograph is unique, much like a Daguerreotype now, Time Magazine in 1976 reported that "copies of SX-70 prints can be made, but originals must be mailed to the company for reproduction, a process that takes about a week or longer." That the entire process, from taking the photograph to film development, is completely automatic and entirely different from previous versions of instant film, which previously had to be done manually, appealed to both amateur photographers and professional photographers. Known artists like Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe used them often.

Andy Warhol, Easter Eggs, 1982 (ArtSTOR)

Robert Mapplethorpe, Ken Moody, 1984 (ArtSTOR)

The crossover between scientist and artist was not entirely one-sided. In 1977 Land had an exhibit at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts where he created "one of the world's largest cameras, a room-sized blowup of his old invention that in only a minute can make a full-color, full-sized copy of a masterpiece [producing] a huge negative, 102 centimeters by 203 centimeters (40 in. by 80 in.), from which an equally big print is made by the Polaroid process" (Time Magazine 1977).

The creative process of the SX-70 did not begin with the consumer, but started with the building of the camera itself: "A Polaroid engineer had the unusual insight one afternoon that the motors used to run his son's toy race cars might work [...] the next day Polaroid researchers invaded a Boston hobby shop and eventually modeled the SX-70 motor on an electric-train engine that they spotted there (Time Magazine 1972). Another aspect that was unique about the camera and film pack was that a wafer-thin battery was packaged inside every container of SX-70 film for the camera to operate, which seems to have been a problematic aspect later on.

A brief overview of Polaroid cameras until the SX-70 illustrates why this camera became so popular:

• The First Polaroid Land camera goes on sale in 1948
• The "Model 95" (weighing nearly 4 lbs.) produced sepia-toned pictures of varying quality to major profits
• Black and white film in 1950 
• A camera with an automatic exposure system in 1960 with 15 second pictures
• Color film and film cartridges in 1963
• The low priced Swinger in 1965
• The low priced Colorpack II in 1969 
• And another low priced Square Shooter in 1971 

(Time Magazine 1972)

While the Polaroid Corporation since the 1970s-1980s have been hit with multiple technology, marketing, and financial blows which ultimately saw the demise of all progeny brought forth from the SX-70 by 2008, there are been various attempts by the company and third parties (see: http://shop.the-impossible-project.com/shop/ ) to keep instant film from completely dying out. Hobbyists can fill the void with Fujifilm's Instax and Instax Mini if finding and procuring a usable SX-70 is too much trouble.

Additional Resources


- An original television advertisement from the 1970s about the SX-70
- http://www.smithsonian.com/polaroid Some photographic results of how famous artists used the SX-70

Bibliography

Edwards, Owen. "ONE-STEP WONDER." Smithsonian 42, no. 11 (March 2012): 40-41. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2013).

"Getting the Big Picture." Time 110, no. 13 (September 26, 1977): 92. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2013).

"Instant Battle: Kodak v. Polaroid." Time 107, no. 17 (April 26, 1976): 69. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2013).

Jim. Jim's Polaroid Camera Collection. Last modified May 06, 2009. http://polaroids.theskeltons.org

"Polaroid's Big Gamble on Small Cameras." Time 99, no. 26 (June 26, 1972): 92. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2013).

"TO CAPTURE A MOMENT IN TIME." Saturday Evening Post 247, no. 1 (January 1975): 62-67. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2013).