NPC Corporation history

[Takkun]

Way back when I inherited a Bronica SQ-A, I was lucky enough to get th accompanying film back, complete with the old-style logos of both companies on it.
It got me thinking and reading up on the history of pack film, and one name I kept seeing was NPC, a brand that apparently manufactured pack film backs for a huge number of camera bodies along with a Polaroid 190 clone.
One source referenced the company name as "Newton Plastics Corporation," which is an intriguing connection considering Polaroid was headquartered in Cambridge and had a manufacturing presence in Framingham ( I remember bicycling past the abandoned factory a few times in college).

But that's about it. I can't find any website or any information about them at all, just ebay listings and occasionally making appearances in catalog pages in old photo magazines. Does anyone out there have any information?

 

[sevo]

They were the maker of these fancy "Polaroid proof from a 35mm Nikon" fibreglass backs, and made bits and pieces for Polaroid - many of the injection moulded parts on Polaroid cameras and backs have NPC inscribed somewhere next to the date and cast stamps. I strongly suspect that they also made entire cameras for Polaroid - the 195 was continued as the NPC195 after Polaroid dropped it, which would hardly have been feasible otherwise.

A search shows it as still registered, but going by the accommodation address, the company may by now be small enough to fit inside a pigeon hole.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Newton Plastics Corporation disappeared a few years ago, with the precipitous drop in Polaroid sales -- though Polaroid backs were far from all they made. Frances and I knew the owner, Jim Stolper, and his wife, also Frances, well enough always to have dinner with them at any show where we both happened to be (photokina, NY show, etc.)

NPC did a lot of work for NASA (and may still do, for all I know) and made the extremely clever NPC Proball tripod head, of which I have two. The NPC 195 was very much re-engineered from the Polaroid 195, though it used the same (bought in) lenses and rangefinders: the original was not made by NPC. There were a couple of 4x5 inch prototypes based on the NPC 195 but it never entered production because (again) film sales were on the slide.

Jim licensed the fibre-optic transfer plate from Marty Forscher (whom I also met often thanks to Jim) and indeed they made me what may have been the last ever Nikon F Polaroid back. It wasn't just 35mm, though: they used the same technology for numerous MF backs, including Pentax 67.

Cheers,

R.