Classic Polaroid Instant Camera vs Instax -- The EIectronics Inside 21

I can remember the polaroid camera when it first came out. I never owned one but I did see it used and possibly, if my memory is correct, I might even have had my picture taken with it - but that could be wishful thinking. When they came out they were expensive which is probably the main reason I did not own one.

But, what I did use is the ultrasonic rangefinder which you could purchase as a separate item. They were the rangefinder of choice for robotics in the 1980s and I had several on my first mobile robot, well , maybe just one. They were just fantastic, bearing in mind that there were no SRF04/08 modules in those days. I think they had a large range, probably over 8 feet (were we decimal/metric in 1980?) and because they has such a large transmitter/receiver they were very sensitive. I think they are effectively electrostatic speakers used to generate the ultrasonic chirrup - which did cause some problems when using them as they required a big current pulse to generate the ultrasonic burst, which would screw up all the other electronics so they needed careful handling. The board has a non-linear amplifier that increases the gain as time passes, probably proportionally with the dissipation of the ultrasonic burst power, which I think is what all the TI chips are for. I think it cost about £18 in 1980 - very expensive, but there was nothing to touch it. It even had an analogue output where you could see the analogue voltage from the receiver, which enabled some clever things to be done with signal processing. If you look at mobile robots and possibly other types of robots from that time, they will all (well mostly all) have Polaroid ultrasonic rangefinders and/or cameras .

Dubbie

Good point on the SE - I gues I was a little too indoctrinated by Windows 98 SE!

Hopefully we'll be able to confirm the photo query soon!

There is a date reference to the 5000 SE as being a 1978 model:

SX 70

Camera Museum, Netherlands

The SE may stand for 'special edition' as opposed to 'second edition' ?

I seem to recall that the shaking of Polaroids stems back to the original 'peel apart' film, which after separating the negative from the positive, left the print still wet from the reagent gel, and the shaking helped speed up the drying process by exposing the reagent to moving air. In comparison, modern instant film is all self-contained.