Editing Edwin H. Land (section)

===Polaroid===
[[FIle:Edwin H. Land with new Polaroid, cropped.jpg|Land presenting the Polavision home movie system, 1977|thumb]]
{{Main|Polaroid Corporation}}
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.<ref name="mcelheny" />{{Rp|69}}

The company was renamed the [[Polaroid Corporation]] in 1937.<ref>{{Cite web |title=History of Polaroid and Edwin Land |url=https://www.boston.com/uncategorized/noprimarytagmatch/2012/10/03/history-of-polaroid-and-edwin-land/}}</ref><ref name=":1" />

Land further developed and produced the sheet polarizers under the [[Polaroid (polarizer)|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, as a necessary component of all [[Liquid crystal display|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.<ref name=":1" />

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.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Polaroid {{!}} Harvard Business School: Invention of the Polarizer|url=https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/polaroid/instant-photography/the-idea-of-instant-photography/|access-date=2021-03-29|website=www.library.hbs.edu}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite journal |citeseerx = 10.1.1.475.6201|title = The retinex theory of color vision|journal = Sci. Am.|pages = 108–128|year = 1977|last1 = Land|first1 = Edwin H.|volume = 237|issue = 6|doi = 10.1038/scientificamerican1277-108|pmid = 929159|bibcode = 1977SciAm.237f.108L}}</ref> Called the [[Land Camera]], it was in commercial sale less than two years later. Polaroid originally manufactured sixty units of this first camera. 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.<ref name=Wensberg/> He once wore the same clothes for eighteen consecutive days while solving problems with the commercial production of polarizing film.<ref name=Wensberg/> As the Polaroid company grew, Land had teams of assistants working in shifts at his side. As one team wore out, the next team was brought in to continue the work.

[[Elkan Blout]], a close colleague of Edwin Land at Polaroid, wrote: "What was Land like? Knowing him was a unique experience. He was a true visionary; he saw things differently from other people, which is what led him to the idea of instant photography. He was a brilliant, driven man who did not spare himself and who enjoyed working with equally driven people."<ref>Blout, E.R., 1996. "Polaroid: Dreams to Reality" in ''The Power of Boldness'', ed. by E.R. Blout, Joseph Henry Press, pp. 60–75.</ref>