Polaroid Fades Out

You could take a snapshot of our generations by how long they had to wait to see how their family pictures turned out--from days in the time of the Brownie to minutes in the Polaroid era to no time at all with today's digital memory-makers.

The Brownies are long gone, and now the Polaroid Corporation has announced it will stop producing film for those instant cameras that recorded the first steps of the Baby Boomers after World War II and followed them through the rest of the century.

A new generation of kids might be puzzled by pictures that had to be pulled from the camera, but their parents and grandparents can tell them about the excitement of seeing images and memories slowly take shape before their eyes.

Polaroid is fading out of the picture, but the memories will remain in shoeboxes and old family albums in American closets, basements and attics.