Polaroid Corporation was an American company best known for its instant film and cameras, which now survives as a brand for consumer electronics.

[6] A new Polaroid company formed,[4][6] and the brand assets changed hands multiple times before being sold to Polish billionaire Wiaczesław Smołokowski [pl] in 2017.

[8] Since the original company's downfall, Polaroid-branded products in other fields, such as LCD televisions and DVD players, have been developed and released by various licensees globally.

[9][10] The original Polaroid Corporation was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Edwin Land and George W. Wheelwright III in 1937.

[12][13] It has been described by The Boston Globe as a "juggernaut of innovation", and "the Apple of its time" with a "leader in Edwin Land, a scientist who guided the company as the founding CEO for four decades".

Land, having completed his freshman year at Harvard University, left to pursue this market, resulting in Polaroid's birth.

[15] During World War II, Polaroid designed and manufactured numerous products for the armed services including an infrared night viewing device.

He headed the Polaroid Corporation, developing it from a small research and marketing firm into a well-known high-tech company.

He gave the first public demonstration of his new Land Camera in February 1947; from then until 1972, the user had to release the film manually, pull a tab, and peel the negative from the finished positive print—the first version to eliminate these intermediate steps was the SX-70 of 1972, which ejected the print automatically.

The landmark[17] Streamline Moderne style structure would be added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982.

[1] In 1977, Land introduced the Polaroid Instant Home Movie camera named Polavision, based on the Dufaycolor process.

[1] The company was in fact one of the early manufacturers of digital cameras, with the PDC-2000 in 1996;[22] however, it failed to capture a large market share in that segment.

The outcome was that within ten months, most of the business (including the "Polaroid" name itself[5] and non-bankrupt foreign subsidiaries) had been sold to Bank One's One Equity Partners (OEP).

[1]: 31 As part of the settlement, the original Polaroid Corporation changed its name to Primary PDC, Inc.[4][26] Having sold its assets, it was now effectively nothing more than an administrative shell.

[28] As of late 2006[update], Primary PDC remained in existence under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection,[5] but conducts no commercial business and has no employees.

[6] Polaroid’s bankruptcy is widely attributed to the failure of senior management — unable to anticipate the impact of digital cameras on its film business.

In September 2002, World Wide Licenses, a subsidiary of The Character Group plc, was granted the exclusive rights for three years to manufacture and sell digital cameras under the Polaroid brand for distribution internationally.

[36] On April 2, 2009, Patriarch Partners won an auction for Polaroid Corporation's assets including the company's name, intellectual property, and photography collection.

[37] This led to some very contentious fighting and litigation, and Patriarch wound up walking away in early May 2009, and a joint venture between Gordon Brothers Brands LLC and Hilco Consumer Capital LP picked up the pieces.

According to a Reuters report: The move by New York-based Patriarch, a private-equity firm, [to drop their claim], follows US District Judge James Rosenbaum's ruling on Thursday in Minneapolis that putting the purchase on hold during appeal would threaten operations at Polaroid, which is spending its cash at a rate of $3 million a month.

[verify]On April 16, 2009, Polaroid won US Bankruptcy Court approval to be sold to a joint venture of Hilco Consumer Capital LP of Toronto and Gordon Brothers Brands LLC of Boston.

The majority of employees remained in their positions at the company's Minnetonka, Minnesota headquarters as well as office locations in Boston, New York and Toronto.

[42] In a 2014 interview an account supervisor at R&J Public Relations, the PR firm for Polaroid, stated that the company is no longer working with Lady Gaga.

[44] Smołokowski was already the largest shareholder in the Impossible Project—a company formed to continue production of Polaroid-compatible film after Polaroid themselves left the market—having been persuaded to invest in it by his son Oskar.

[51] Consequently, Polaroid banned all sales to the government, including the military and police, and promised to raise wages and increase job training at its distributors.

As a result of protests, a community group in Boston donated $10,000 it received from Polaroid to South African liberation movements.

[79] The printer, designed by Polaroid and Lady Gaga, allows people to print directly from a mobile phone or digital camera.

Other features on the media player include Wi-Fi, touch screen, geotagging, smart albums, and 32 GB of storage via a micro SD card.

In March 2006, the specialist design and development department in Polaroid's Vale of Leven plant in Scotland was bought out by its management team.