Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) physicist, inventor, and manufacturer

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Land studied at Harvard, where he became interested in the physics of polarized light. After leaving college without a degree, he developed a polarizing material that was inexpensive and easy to manufacture. From an early age, Land was preoccupied with the idea of polarized light, and he opened a laboratory in his home while still a college student. In 1929, he applied for a patent for a polarizer that resembled a sheet of glass. In 1932, he announced at a Harvard conference that he had developed a complete solution for polarizing light.

Building on this success, he opened the Land- Wheelwright Laboratories in collaboration with George Wheelwright in Boston and began selling his products to the Eastman Kodak Company. In 1937, he and Wheelwright founded the Polaroid Corporation, which began producing polarized products for civilian and military use. When World War II broke out, the company’s sales soared as it began selling rifle sights, filters, periscope filters, and goggles to the military. After the war, the company’s sales plunged, and Land began seeking new uses for his inventions.

In 1943, he conceived the idea of a camera whose pictures could be developed within 60 seconds. The first Polaroid camera produced sepiatone photographs quickly after being taken. In 1950, black and white pictures were available, and in 1963, the camera was adapted to produce color pictures. As a result, the company became one of the best-known American success stories of the immediate post–World War II period.

The Polaroid camera underwent several generations of development. In the early 1970s, the SX-70 model was able to produce a fully finished, or laminated, photograph within a minute of being taken. Land went on to collect more than 500 patents during his lifetime before retiring from the company in 1980. He was active in the 3-D movie process that was developed to great fanfare in the early 1950s. One of his later ideas, that of instant movies, proved a failure and never saw the light of day. During his retirement, he devoted his time to the Rowland Institute of Science, an organization he founded in 1960.

Although Land never graduated from college, he later became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also lectured at Harvard. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977. The Polaroid Corporation became one of Wall Street’s favorite stocks in the 1960s and was one of the 50 most popular among investors because of its cutting edge technology. Despite the introduction of new models, the company began to lose market share and fell out of favor on Wall Street. Developments in digital photography put the company under further pressure, and it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001.

See also EASTMAN, GEORGE.

Further reading

• McElheny, Victor K. Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land. New York: Perseus, 1999. 
• Olshaker, Mark. Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience. New York: Stein & Day, 1978.