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"If you don't care about science enough to be interested in it on its own, you shouldn't try to write hard science fiction."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Instant Photography | ||
| A photograph that develops immediately inside the camera. |
Henrik Juve is the first to describe this idea.
| "How do you make photographs so quickly?" asked
Addison, more interested in the process than the report
"I was going to ask you about it when I saw the one
made in your office back at the airdrome."
"I had forgotten that you used to immerse your plates in chemical baths and otherwise go to a great deal of trouble and then secure only a black and white result," the captain nodded. "We have two kinds of films, the black and the white. In either case the emulsion is in the presence of a powerful catalytic agent which makes the film 'exposing out.' I mean that when the film is exposed in the camera the picture appears instantly and requires no development. We use a gas which is a negative catalytic force and permanently stops all action. We release this gas inside the camera automatically after the exposure, so we can take the completed picture out immediately. "The black films have a black emulsion which turns lighter upon exposure to light, the more intense the light the lighter the result. They are responsive to colors and reproduce them perfectly. Since we start with a black film and high-lights appear light, we obtain a positive. We print these on black paper or film to obtain copies in positive. "The white films have a white emulsion that turns dark upon exposure to light, resulting in a negative. To obtain positive copies we print them on white paper or films." |
| Technovelgy from The Silent Destroyer,
by Henri Dahl Juve. Published by Air Wonder Stories in 1929 Additional resources -
|
I might have to give the nod to John Jacob Astor IV on having expressed the idea in his 1894 classic A Journey in Other Worlds; see his description of what are now called "speed cameras" - he described instantaneous kodaks.
The classic example of an instant camera is the Kodak SX-70; my dad had one of these and they were great looking cameras, well designed and perfect for his purpose. He was an architect who visited job sites to make sure construction was proceeding properly; he documented progress with photographs. He could see that the pictures were adequate before leaving the site.
Another example of the use of instant photography that science fiction fans probably recall occurs at the end of The Terminator (1984):
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- Instant Photography, Predicted By sf In 1929, Makes A Comeback
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'The king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions...'
'...a hemispherical force field enclosing his head.'
'Then he became aware of a gentle pressure pushing him away from the ship.'
'And now they wre busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on...'
'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down...'
'Maybe the individual intelligence of each Cubic pools into a group intelligence...'
