Polaroid introduced the first commercially available instant camera, the Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, in 1948. It allowed users to produce a photograph shortly after pressing the shutter.
The camera grew from inventor Edwin H. Land’s work on self-developing photography. Land demonstrated an instant-camera system to the Optical Society of America on 21 February 1947. The commercial Model 95 went on sale on 26 November 1948 at Jordan Marsh department store in Boston.
The Model 95 used Polaroid roll film and produced sepia-toned prints measuring about 3¼ by 4¼ inches. Its launch price was $89.75, a substantial sum at the time. The first batch sold out immediately, showing that customers valued seeing a picture without waiting for a laboratory.
People sometimes confuse the first Polaroid camera with later square-film models such as the SX-70, introduced in 1972. Fujifilm’s Instax cameras are also instant cameras, but they arrived decades later. Kodak was involved in photographic film more broadly, not in introducing the Polaroid Model 95.