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Who inventor edwin land10/13/2023 The subjects were the Polaroid Corporation employees themselves, Edwin Land posing in his office, the technicians at work portraits of their families, as well as street scenes captured around the building, cars and pets. Within an hour, the camera, film and operation became so clear to me that with a great sense of excitement I hurried to the location of Donald Brown, our patent attorney”.īetween 19 the company launched a special project dedicated to instant photography, SX-70, of which in addition to the official documents, the Polaroid archives also store the first – and numerous – print tests made to try out films and cameras in different situations. ![]() While walking through that fascinating city, I wanted to solve the riddle she had posed to me. It was then 1943 and, as Land himself recalls, “I remember a sunny day of vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when my daughter asked me why she couldn’t immediately see the photo I had just taken of her. Camera demonstration at New York Museum of Science and Industry Photography Show, February 1949. William von Eggers Doering, Polaroid sponsored the discovery of synthetic quinine alternative to the natural one, precious for the treatment of malaria. Vannevar Bush, former vice president of engineering at MIT, asked them for help in the war effort, so during his Christmas speech in 1942, Land stated “we now exist for one purpose: to win this war”, and the aim the company turned towards that direction. Working with the National Defense Research Committee, Polaroid engineers created a wide range of products: “polarizing filters for gunsights, binoculars, periscopes, rangefinders and infrared night vision devices” without forgetting that – as reported in the catalog of the exhibition curated by Melissa Banta, At the intersection of science & art – “another contribution from Polaroid was the production of quinine”, extracted from the bark of a tropical tree in Java, whose production was interrupted due to the occupation of the Japanese troops. Thanks to Land’s charisma and his team of engineers and researchers, the company increased its turnover so much that, in 1937 the Polaroid Corporation saw the light, despite the dark times the imminent war was bringing about. Land started a collaboration with General Motors and with Eastman Kodak for the creation of filters for cameras, with the American Optical Company for the production of polarized lenses for sunglasses and, last but not least, he also invented the antiglare desk lamp with designer Walter Dorwin Teague, future creator of some of the most famous Polaroid cameras. After all, even the polarized sheet was born “for the public welfare”, a solution against the danger of being blinded by car lights at night. ![]() It is the economics historian Harold Livesay who emphasizes how Land supported harmony and perfect symbiosis between “work, virtue, profit, beauty, technology and progress” in fact, from a very early age, he developed a philanthropic idea of industrialism, taking into account the physical and mental well-being of his employees, who needed “comfortable conditions” and “intensive concentration” to develop their inventions. Wheelwright III demonstrating Polaroid polarising lenses, ca. Wheelwright III, he started his first company called Land-Wheelwright Laboratories. ![]() You want to be free to think not for an hour or three, but for two days or two weeks, if possible, without interruption” and so he did until, in 1932, together with physics professor George W. The university environment was distracting for him, while inside the library no one would dictate time and schedules: as Land himself said, “you don’t want to be disturbed. Wood’s Physical Optics, the masterpiece of the important American physicist who discovered Black light, better known as Wood’s Light. ![]() Immersed in his solitary readings, he got blown away by Robert W. Industry at its best is the intersection of science and art.Įdwin Land, second only to Thomas Edison in number of patents, was defined as the last of the great geniuses for his scientific innovations, including the invention of the first polarizing sheet, made of a plastic film studded with numerous herapatite crystals an idea that brought about a real revolution in various fields, including photography, with the birth of the Polaroid.īorn in Connecticut on May 7, 1909, Edwin Land enrolled at Harvard University in 1926 but, already by the fall semester, he was spending long hours in the New York Public Library to consult books on physics, optics and chemistry. Courtesy Polaroid Corporation records, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. Edwin Land with instant photograph of himself, 1947.
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