Polaroid (polarizer) Polaroid (polarizer) Polaroid is a type of synthetic plastic sheet which is used as a polarizer or polarizing filter. A trademark of the Polaroid Corporation, the term has since entered common use. The original material, patented in 1929 and further developed in 1932 by Edwin H. Land, consists of many microscopic crystals of iodoquinine sulphate (herapathite) embedded in a transparent nitrocellulose polymer film. The needle-like crystals are aligned during manufacture of the film by stretching or by applying electric or magnetic fields. With the crystals aligned, the sheet is dichroic: it tends to absorb light which is polarized parallel to
Polaroid SX-70 manufactured up until 2005, though overseas-market and some last run film packs were marked only as SX-70. A feature of the SX-70 film packs was a built-in battery to power the camera motors and exposure control, ensuring that a charged battery would always be available as long as film was in the camera. The "Polapulse" battery was configured as a 6 volt thin flat battery, and used zinc chloride chemistry to provide for the high pulse demand of the camera motors. Polaroid later released development kits to allow the Polapulse battery to be used in non-photographic applications. In the 1980s,