Edwin H. Land

Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation.

He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision, among other things.

Land attended the Norwich Free Academy at Norwich, Connecticut, a semi-private high school, and graduated in the class of 1927 with honors.

The library there was posthumously named for him, having been funded by grants from his family.

He studied physics at Harvard University, more specifically, optics, but left after his freshman year, moving to New York City.

There he invented the first inexpensive filters capable of polarizing light, which he called Polaroid film.

He was not associated with an educational institution and lacked the tools of a proper laboratory, making this a difficult endeavor, so he would sneak into a laboratory at Columbia University late at night to use their equipment.

He also availed himself of the New York Public Library to scour the scientific literature for prior work on polarizing substances.

His breakthrough came when he realized that, instead of attempting to grow a large single crystal of a polarizing substance, he could manufacture a film with millions of micron-sized polarizing crystals that were coaxed into perfect alignment with each other.

Land returned to Harvard University after developing the polarizing film, but he did not finish his studies or receive a degree.

Despite not receiving a college degree, he was still referred to from many as Dr. Land especially when he set up visiting posts to Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to biographer Peter Wensberg, once Land could see the solution to a problem in his head, he lost all motivation to write it down or prove his vision to others.

Often his wife would extract from him the answers to homework problems, at the prodding of his instructor.

She would then write up the homework and hand it in so that he could receive credit and not fail the course.

In 1932, he established the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories together with his Harvard physics professor, George Wheelwright III, to commercialize his polarizing technology.

Wheelwright came from a family of financial means and agreed to fund the company.

After a few early successes developing polarizing filters for sunglasses and photographic filters, Land obtained funding from a series of Wall Street investors for further expansion.

The company was renamed the Polaroid Corporation in 1937.

Land further developed and produced the sheet polarizers under the Polaroid trademark.

Although the initial major application was for sunglasses and scientific work, it quickly found many additional applications: for color animation in the Wurlitzer 850 Peacock jukebox of 1942, for glasses in full-color stereoscopic (3-D) movies, to control brightness of light through a window, a necessary component of all LCDs, and many more.

During World War II, he worked on military tasks, which included developing dark-adaptation goggles, target finders, the first passively guided smart bombs, and a special stereoscopic viewing system called the Vectograph, co-invented with Czech refugee Joseph Mahler, which revealed camouflaged enemy positions in aerial photography.

With all this, he was also a consultant to the National Research Defense Committee which focused its efforts on non-governmental scientific research.

On a vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his three-year-old eldest daughter, Jennifer, he took a picture of her.

After she asked why she could not see the picture her father just took of her, within an hour he already had the idea for an instant film camera.

His patent attorney, Donald Brown, was also there at the time visiting Santa Fe and he quickly approached him with this idea and Brown agreed on the idea.

After this trip, research for the development of this idea began immediately.

A little more than three years later, on February 21, 1947, Land demonstrated an instant camera and associated film to the Optical Society of America.

Called the Land Camera, it was in commercial sale less than two years later.

Polaroid originally manufactured sixty units of this first camera.

His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in late 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.

Edwin Land was born to Jewish parents in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Matie (Goldfaden) and Harry Land, a Russian scrap-metal dealer.

Growing up, he was known to take apart household appliances, such as a mantel clock and the family's new gramophone, as well as blowing all the house's fuses when he was six years old.

He was scolded by his father when taking apart a phonograph and he vowed that

"nothing or nobody could stop me from carrying through the execution of an experiment" He had an elder sister named Helen who had a difficult time pronouncing Edwin's name, so she called him "Din" a nickname that stuck throughout the rest of his childhood and was used among his closest friends.

Fifty-seven were put up for sale at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston before the 1948 Christmas holiday.

Polaroid marketers incorrectly guessed that the camera and film would remain in stock long enough to manufacture a second run based on customer demand.

All fifty-seven cameras and all of the film were sold on the first day of demonstrations.

During his time at Polaroid, Land was notorious for his marathon research sessions.

When Land conceived of an idea, he would experiment and brainstorm until the problem was solved with no breaks of any kind.

He needed to have food brought to him and to be reminded to eat.