Fotomat: 1971
Interesting that there's a Flickr group dedicated to these.
There's one of those here in my town. The owner was looking for original photos of it on Facebook the other day. It's boarded up and not used for anything right now, and given its location, behind a store on the edge of a housing subdivision, I'm skeptical that it can be used for much. But then, it was once used as a Fotomat.
Back at this time, if you wanted film developed, this was your option, or you could take it to BiRite, which shipped it off to Denver. It'd come back several days later if you used this option, but was of good quality when it did. Fotomat was something we tended to use for lesser quality cameras for some reason.
BiRite is now long gone. The building it was in remains, but it's a doctor's office and a bakery, plus some other small shops. It's a fairly large downtown building. If you want film developed, Walgreens is about your only option, I think (maybe Walmart too, but I'm not sure). Of course, not too many people shoot film anymore, but every now and then somebody will, and every now and then, if you once shot film, you'll probably find you have some left. Like Fotomat, Walgreens is a same day type of service.
All that is no doubt strange to those who came up in the age of digital photography, when you can shoot thousands of photographs and simply download them. And that development truly was revolutionary. Limiting your shots carefully, as you had to buy the film, and then buy the processing, was something any amature photographer constantly considered.
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