A Look Inside the Chips That Powered the Landmark Polaroid SX-70 Instant Camera
owl writes:
https://www.righto.com/2022/02/a-look-inside-chips-that-powered.html
The revolutionary Polaroid SX-701 camera (1972) was a marvel of engineering: the world's first instant SLR camera. This iconic camera was the brainchild of Dr. Edwin Land, a genius who co-founded Polaroid, invented polarized sunglasses, helped design the optics for the U-2 spy plane, and created a theory of color vision. The camera used self-developing film with square photos that came into view over a few minutes. The film was a complex sandwich of 11 layers of chemicals to develop a negative image and then form the visible color image. But the film was just one of the camera's innovations.
The camera required complex new optics to support the intricate light path shown below. The components included a flat Fresnel mirror, aspherical lenses, and a moving mirror. These optics could focus from infinity down to a closeup of 10 inches. The optics are even more amazing when you consider that the camera folded flat, 3 cm [~ 1.2 inches] thick and able to fit in a jacket pocket.
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