Edwin Land; Inventor of Polaroid Camera
Edwin H. Land, inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corp., died Friday after a long illness. He was 81.
Land, who founded Polaroid in 1937 and the Rowland Institute for Science in 1980, introduced the first instant camera in 1947, starting the era of 60-second photography.
In a familiar anecdote, the idea was said to have struck him on a family vacation when he took a picture of his 3-year-old daughter and she asked why she had to wait to see the picture.
During his tenure at Polaroid, the company introduced instant color photography in 1963 and made a major breakthrough in 1972 with the SX-70 system, which produced a vivid picture outside the camera.
Instant X-rays, Polaroid sunglasses and a 3-D movie projector were among the more than 500 patents he collected during his lifetime.
The shy, scholarly Land broke his bonds with the company in 1982, giving up his seat on the board of directors and leaving his post as consulting director of basic research. He continued as honorary chairman.
He endowed the nonprofit Rowland Institute with more than $50 million in Polaroid stock to support research in pure science, including his own continuing studies of human color vision.
Land was born in Bridgeport, Conn. He graduated with honors from Norwich Academy and entered Harvard. As a freshman, he launched his first experiments on ways to polarize light--a process that filters out diffuse light waves that cause glare.
Land served on numerous government and civic bodies, including the President’s Science Advisory Committee, the Carnegie Commission on Public Television and the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Among his many awards was the first Wright Prize for “achievement in technology” awarded by Harvey Mudd College in Pomona in 1980. The award, which includes a cash stipend and participation in Wright Forum seminars, annually honors those “rare individuals capable of understanding, mastering and bridging different fields of science to make a positive impact on society.”
Some have ranked Land with the likes of Thomas Edison. Land was on Life magazine’s list of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th Century.
“If I’m lucky enough to be able to earn my living by contributing to a warmer and richer world, then I feel that it is awfully good luck,” Land once said in a rare interview. “And if I use all my scientific, professional abilities in doing that, I think that makes for a good life.”
Services will be private, according to the Rowland Institute, which announced the death.
