roamin:

TIME Business

“When the Polaroid film factory in the Dutch town of Enschede shut down in June 2008, it seemed to signal the end for one of the most ingenious and iconic innovations of the 20th century. Almost 60 years after American inventor Edwin H. Land sold the first Model 95 of his new instant-picture camera in Boston in November 1948, the troubled Polaroid Corporation halted its cassette film production for good. Demand was still relatively high — the plant churned out 30 million cassettes in 2007, and 24 million in the first half of 2008 — but the plant had run out of its allocated amount of the chemical components needed to make its famous instant film, and Polaroid’s decision to move to digital meant there was no point in ordering more. The film stocks would last for a little while longer. When they ran out, though, the Polaroid camera, once the world’s most popular with about one billion sold, would be history. But two men attending the factory’s closing ceremony had other ideas. Florian Kaps, an Austrian entrepreneur and Polaroid enthusiast, and André Bosman, until then the engineering manager of the Enschede plant, met by chance on that fateful day. Together, they decided…”

Continue reading this article on TIME