Despite its history of innovation, the company entered the digital photography market very late in the game, and as a result has neither a significant market share nor significant innovation in this area. Quality can range from extremely good, as in the Pathfinder or SX -70 cameras, to extremely poor, as in the Joycam. Most Polaroid cameras have fully automatic exposure systems, with an electronic eye to determine correct exposure. Through its history, Polaroid has been known as a company that builds quirky cameras cheaply that work quite well. All of these films can be expensive, usually costing about $1 per shot, or print. Instant cameras have been produced to use three main categories of film: rollfilm, packfilm, and integral film. The company's original dominant market was in polarized sunglasses, an outgrowth of Land's self-guided research in polarization after leaving Harvard University at the age of 17 (he later returned to Harvard to continue his research).Īfter Polaroid defeated Kodak in a patent battle, Kodak left the instant camera business on January 9, 1986.Įarly instant camera were often referred to and titled as "Land Cameras," named after the inventor of the dry instant film process, Dr. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line. In his retirement years, he founded the Rowland Institute for Science.The Polaroid Corporation was founded in 1937 by Edwin H. He retired as Chairman of Polaroid on March 6, 1980. Despite the fact that he held no formal degree, employees, friends, and the press respected his scientific accomplishments by calling him Dr. In the 1950s, Edwin Land and his team helped design the optics of the revolutionary Lockheed U-2 spy plane.Īlthough he led the Polaroid Corporation as a chief executive, Land was a scientist first and foremost, and as such made sure that he performed "an experiment each day". Called the Land Camera, it was in commercial sale less than two years later. On February 21, 1947, Edwin Land demonstrated an instant camera and associated film. The company was renamed the Polaroid Corporation in 1937.ĭuring 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 which revealed camouflaged enemy positions in aerial photography. 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. ![]() In 1932 he established the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories together with his Harvard physics instructor to commercialize his polarizing technology. However, he still did not finish his studies or receive a degree. 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 micrometre-sized polarizing crystals that were coaxed into perfect alignment with each other.Īfter developing a polarizing film, Edwin Land returned to Harvard. He also availed himself of the New York City public library to scour the scientific literature for prior work on polarizing substances. ![]() ![]() Instead, he would sneak into a laboratory at Columbia University late at night to use their equipment. Because he was not associated with an educational institution, he lacked the tools of a proper laboratory, making this a difficult endeavor. In New York City, he invented the first inexpensive filters capable of polarizing light, Polaroid film. His Polaroid instant camera, which went on sale in late 1948, made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.Īlthough he studied chemistry at Harvard, he left school for New York City after his freshman year. Among other things, he invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and his retinex theory of color vision. ![]()
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