How Can Some Cameras Take Pictures in Ten Seconds?

When you take pictures with an ordinary camera, you must send the film away to a laboratory to have it made into photographs. But the “instant” camera makes pictures right inside the camera itself.

Black-and-white “instant” film consists of two sheets of paper. One is the negative, and one is the positive. After the picture is recorded on the negative sheet, the two sheets pass through a set of rollers.

These rollers break open tiny pods of jellylike chemicals that are attached to the positive sheet, and spread the chemicals over that positive sheet. These chemicals transfer the image from the negative sheet to the positive sheet in about ten seconds. Then the negative sheet can be peeled away from the positive, and the positive sheet will reveal the photograph!

“Instant” color film has six layers of chemicals instead of one!