But not under 60 seconds with the requisite shaking.

Polaroid, Land's household company name, has announced that next year it will stop making film for its instant cameras, the technology it introduced in 1948. Reaching its peak in film and camera sales 30 years later, Polaroid came to define an era. The company quit making the instant cameras last year. It filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and is now owned by a Minnesota Investment firm.

Instant photography was revolutionary. Granted, Land neither stepped on the moon, invented Velcro nor piloted Sputnik. Nor did his watch include FORTRAN, cell phones and the World Wide Web. HDTV? Viagra? The Segway? Nope.

Land gave us something else, something magical and mysterious. He gave us life, captured and clear, all in about a minute.

Watching film come to life after vigorous shaking stunned us. Photos were old hat, but in an instant? That scene in front of us, trapped in the steel and leather box, mixed with chemicals you could smell, miraculously appeared less than 60 seconds later spreading wonder and disbelief in equal proportion.

The instant camera attracted neighbors in color television numbers. The first color set on a block usually meant several nights or sometimes a week of living rooms filled with curious neighbors.

So it was with the early instant cameras, although owners finally figured out that indiscriminate shuttering could run into money with the cost of film.

Nevertheless, Polaroids became synonymous with instant images, just as Xerox did with photocopies and Kleenex with tissue.

Collector's item

Progress, however, has threatened and now will most certainly bury the synonym.

Polaroid instant film (Fuji will still make it) has succumbed to the digital revolution, a sea of change awash in camera phones, virtual photo albums and something called Flickr. Our kids understand that anything they see can become a virtual image, a YouTube classic, an attachment to an e-mail all as quick as their fingers and thumbs can fly.

A real photo, however, requires more: paper, a printer, file management, time. Consequently, most photos remain in the ether as data, vivid potential but nothing more at that point. That makes them neither suitable for framing nor for forgetting in a desk drawer to be discovered in a delicious moment of serendipity years later.

Plus, a report I read Friday argued that photos as simply digital data are much more susceptible to damage and corruption than one you hold in your hand.

Like the rotary phone, eight tracks and rabbit ears, Polaroids are destined to be a collector's item, something you might find on e-Bay or at a swap meet. Their cultural significance now consigned to museums, seminars on modern Americana or thick and weighty history books.

Before this column turns into a complete dirge, all is not lost. The instant camera is still a favorite of a number of artistic endeavors, including motion pictures. It shoots test photos and delivers a printed image in a minute. Its digital betters require much more to produce the same thing.

Plus, Polaroid has said it is open to license anyone willing to make the film and supply it to devotees.

Now, forever

That's doubtful. The writing on this wall is a series of snapshots.

Still, for those of us weaned on the abracadabraness of instant photography, Polaroid's passing signals one more change in the world and marketplace as we know it.

My favorite Polaroid memory, aside from the first time I saw its wonders work, came during a Christmas party in the late 1970s. My wife and I invited a dozen or so friends for a holiday toast one weekend in December. As they arrived we snapped each one with a borrowed Polaroid.

A moment later we were attaching red or green yarn and hanging each picture from our otherwise Spartan tree.

Yes, we could do that now, with a good printer, photo quality paper, very sharp scissors and steady hands and considerable manipulation of computer files.

Chances are good, too, that during today's digital Christmas no one would crowd around the camera as our guests did, waiting for themselves magically to appear in a real photograph then and forever.