Breast-Pocket Polaroid

Waiting impatiently for the routine business portion of Polaroid's annual meeting in Needham, Mass., to end last week, Founder Edwin Land told some 3,000 stockholders: "I don't want what you are about to see to be involved in this monetary domain." Anyone who thought that monetary affairs are supposed to dominate an annual meeting soon found out differently. Land had decided to use this meeting to stage the long-awaited debut of his new, pocket-sized camera. Unfolding a leather-covered box to form a vaguely triangular Polaroid camera. Land focused on his oversized meerschaum pipe and pushed the shutter button five times in quick succession. About a second after each touch, a 3-in. by 3-in. blank plastic square shot out. Slowly and almost magically, like invisible ink being activated, they turned into color prints.

Land admitted that the camera's size -- about 1 1/4in. thick and 4 1/2in. by 7-in. in area when folded shut--is somewhat larger than he had originally planned, and thus raises "the question of just which pocket it will fit." (Answer: the breast pocket of a man's suit, snugly.) A major innovation in the still-unnamed camera is the single-lens-reflex viewing system that allows a picture taker to see precisely the same image that eventually appears on film. Except for conventional focusing, the entire process is controlled automatically by a tiny system of integrated electronic circuits. For indoor pictures or where the light is poor, the camera uses a five-picture flash unit developed by General Electric Co.

Polaroid employees later demonstrated the new camera in booths scattered about a company warehouse near Boston that had been cleaned up and prettified for the affair. The new film developed for the camera produced brilliant color, though some pictures appeared to be less sharp than those processed on standard, non-Polaroid film. Even so, the end product is superior to any previous Polaroid process. Unlike the damp prints that emerge from present models, the new ones --which are made of plastic, not paper --feel completely dry, even during the remarkable, outside-the-camera developing process. Thus the paper liners and other litter needed to protect prints in present Polaroids have been eliminated in the new one.

Polaroid has built five new factories in the Boston area to make the new camera and film, which company officials expect to have on dealers' shelves in time for the Christmas season. Estimated prices: $100 to $175 for the camera, about 45-c- per picture for the film. Any production delays might prove enormously costly, since sales of Polaroid's more expensive current models ($110 to $175) undoubtedly will trickle off until the new product is available. In an effort to prevent such a sales lag, Polaroid has refused to provide any pictures or drawings of the new camera, and some of Land's closest advisers urged him to withhold last week's public viewing. However, over the years Land has established an exceptionally close rapport with his stockholders --they once loyally broke into applause when informed by the founder that Polaroid would probably not show a profit that year--and he evidently decided that they deserved the first look.

Land's stockholders may have to cherish their more intangible rewards for some time. Although Polaroid's first-quarter profits grew by a healthy 17% over those of 1971, Treasurer Harvey Thayer has predicted that the rest of 1972 will be a "lean year," partly because of the huge sums of cash required for production of the new camera. Yet Land, who literally invented the $540 million instant-photography market, displayed profound confidence in his latest product. "Our camera is intellectually complicated and operationally simple," he said. "All you have to do to have the picture is to will it." His enthusiasm was obviously catching. The next day Polaroid's stock shot up 7 1/4 3/8points, to 131, and it closed the week at 139, a new high for the year.

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Whatever problems Polaroid may encounter with its new instant-processing camera and film, they will not include any immediate competition from the company's chief rival in the amateur camera market, Eastman Kodak Co. Although Kodak is making "solid progress toward an in-camera processing system of our own," according to President Gerald B. Zornow, company officials declined to predict when it might be available. Kodak's entry into the pocket-photography race--the recently introduced Pocket Instamatic (TIME, March 27)--is much further along. Zornow reports that orders placed by camera dealers have "all but erased substantial inventories in new pocket products."

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