To Edwin Land, the scientist who invented Polaroid, the SX-70 color camera was the height of his achievement. The first instant SLR, it could develop photos automatically in broad daylight. And it was a model of elegant design. Fold it up and it fit right inside your polyester suit pocket.And this “orientation film,” directed by Glen Fleck and David Olney, produced by the Eames Bros and newly restored by Devious Design, is the height of gadget advertising: no frills, no shine, but much explanation about how the camera works, how to use it, and how it’s made. It makes you feel like a human learning about a tool, and not a tool yourself.The camera was amazing, but it didn’t pretend to be magical. “You can look at technology as a living tree, or you can see it as a net. But the human reality is more intricate than either one,” says the narrator. “This invention is finally a system. Call it a system of novelties. But even that is not enough. The camera enters the real world only once it is precisely manufactured in quantity,” in a process imbued with beauty and the skill and care of a series of inventors and engineers.The user makes up the last part of this chain. He or she uses the camera not because it exists, or because it’s cool, but because it’s useful, and it does its thing beautifully, and intelligibly.Fast forward four decades, and listen to Jonathan Ive, Apple designer, rhapsodize about iPad: “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical.”The SX-70 film is a promo, an ad. But told in the language of family and wonder and actual information, it’s a really sweet one, with the earnest and curious texture of a Hal Ashby film. We’d be lucky to ever have an ad like that (and probably a camera like that) again.See our previous coverage of the Polaroid and our Q+A with the Impossible Project.This post originally appeared on Motherboard on August 17, 2010.
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