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Edwin H. Land
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| Scientist: Edwin Herbert Land |
American inventor (1909–1991)
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Land began his education at Harvard but left to develop a number of commercial ideas.
His first success was a method of producing a relatively cheap filter that would transmit polarized light. The material, sold under the tradename Polaroid, was a plastic containing aligned crystals, which restrict the light vibrations to one plane. Land set up the Polaroid Corporation in 1937 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With the onset of World War II there was an increased demand for polarizing filters for sunglasses, binoculars, and other optical instruments, and Land's company flourished.
Following the end of the war Land sought new areas to exploit. He chose photography and concentrated on designing an instant camera. Chemicals to develop the film were contained in a lead pod pierced as it was squeezed through a pair of rollers. Early instant cameras required a wait of a minute or more before peeling away the protective plastic. Land's SX70 camera, launched in 1972, ejected the print instantly for the image to develop within seconds.
Land also tried to develop a new theory of color vision that began by rejecting the old trichromatic theory linked with Newton and Young. How, he asked, does the eye cope with an excess of red in a room lit by an incandescent tungsten light? Familiar objects like green apples and yellow lemons do not appear to redden in this artificial light, despite the fact that it does not have the same spectral distribution as sunlight. How do objects retain their ‘color identity’ under a great variety of lighting conditions? It cannot simply be the responses of the retinal photoreceptors to radiant energy; also involved are high-level brain processes. Thus for Land, vision was a retina-and-cortex system, which he called a retinex system.
| Biography: Edwin Herbert Land |
The American physicist, inventor, and manufacturer Edwin Herbert Land (1909-1991) was the first to develop successfully a synthetic light-polarizing material and to develop a camera for one-step photography.
Edwin Land was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1909. After attending preparatory school he entered Harvard University. He soon became involved in studying polarized light and began experiments to develop a way of creating the effect artificially. In normal light, wave vibrations take place in all directions; in polarized light, these vibrations are controlled and permitted to travel only in certain directions.
In 1828 a prism had been invented that was used to polarize light for optical instruments. The great expense of the prism, however, limited its use, and a search was begun for a cheaper means of creating the same effect; most attempts had concentrated on trying to grow very large crystals in the laboratory. Land, deciding to leave college to pursue his work at a laboratory in New York City, approached the problem by using many small crystals tightly packed together to produce the effect of one large crystal. His technique was to extrude plastic containing the artificial crystals through small holes, thus ensuring that the crystals would all be lying in the proper direction.
Early Work Yields Success
For much of his early career, Land worked alone. While working in New York, however, he met Helen Maislen, a graduate of Smith College who became his assistant and, in 1929, his wife. In that year, he returned to Harvard, where the university provided him with laboratory space for his research. Land discussed his work with George W. Wheel-wright III, a physics instructor at Harvard who had been one of his teachers. In 1932 Wheelwright left teaching to work with Land, and together the two men opened a consulting physics laboratory and continued to perfect their polarizer. In 1937 Land organized the Polaroid Corporation, which is today the leading firm in the field.
Land's inventive ability was matched by a shrewd business sense. Part of his success was due to the fact that he licensed his method for various applications: to the American Optical Company for sunglasses, to the Eastman Kodak Company for camera filters, and to Bausch and Lomb Company for optical instruments.
During World War II, Land worked on optics and missiles for the National Defense Research Committee. In 1847 he invented the Polaroid Land camera, which made possible one-step photography. In 1948 he received the coveted Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In that same year, he developed a new optical system that enabled scientists at the Sloan-Kettering Institute to observe living human cells in their natural color. During the 1950s, Land served as head of a presidential committee studying ways to prevent future sneak attacks on the United States like the one that occurred at Pearl Harbor. Land's Polaroid Corporation continued research in optics generally and in color vision, plastics, and other fields.
A Dream Realized
Crowning achievements of Land's career came in 1963, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 1967, when he received the National Medal of Science, both presented by President Lyndon Johnson. In 1972, Land was able to see a long-held dream of his become a reality when he introduced the SX-70 instant color camera to the world. Land was granted 533 patents for his inventions, and in 1977, the U.S. Patent Office inducted him into the Inventor's Hall of Fame. In August of 1982, Land retired. On March 1, 1991, he died of undisclosed causes at the age of 81. In an age increasingly characterized by the displacement of individual inventors by large industrial research laboratories, Land's career indicates that individuals can still make contributions to technological progress.
Further Reading
Books on Land or on his career include Mark Olshaker, The Instant Image (1978), Peter C. Wensberg, Land's Polaroid (1987), and Scott McPartland, Edwin Land "Masters of Invention Set" (1993).
| Photography Encyclopedia: Edwin Land |
Land, Edwin (1909-91), American scientist, inventor, and industrialist, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. While studying physics at Harvard in the 1920s he became interested in the polarization of light. He developed a new polarizing material, which he called Polaroid, and in 1937 formed the Polaroid Corporation with himself as president and head of research.
Land is best known for the invention of the Polaroid instant photographic process, in which processing chemicals are incorporated in the photographic material and processing occurs immediately after picture taking, using a special camera. Land involved the Eastman Kodak Company in the production of Polaroid type 40 film that was introduced in 1948. It was a ‘peel-apart’ system that gave sepia-coloured prints. The Polacolor process, which gave a full colour print in 60 seconds, was introduced in 1963 and the SX-70 system, which was integral and did not require peeling apart, was introduced in 1972.
— Chris Roberts
Bibliography
- McElheny, V. K., Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land (1998)
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Edwin Herbert Land |
Land, Edwin Herbert, 1909-91, American inventor and photographic pioneer. While at Harvard, Land became interested in the properties and manipulation of polarized light. He left Harvard and, in 1932, created Polaroid J Sheet, a polarizing material that was inexpensive and easy to fabricate. In partnership with George Wheelwright, a Harvard physics instructor, Land in 1937 founded the Polaroid Corporation, where he adapted polarized materials for sunglasses, 3-D movies, and military use. In 1947 he demonstrated a single-step photographic process that enabled pictures to be developed in 60 seconds; a color process was marketed in 1963, and a self-developing positive print followed in 1973. In the original Land process, a negative material was exposed inside the camera and then drawn out, while being squeezed against a layer of reagent and a positive material. After 60 (later 10) seconds the layers could be separated and the negative discarded. In the current Polacolor process, light makes a series of latent images on appropriate dye layers of the film sheet; when the picture is ejected from the camera, processing reagent activates the image in these lower layers, which reaches final form after several minutes. The resulting print is protected by a hard plastic film. (See photographic processing.) Holder of more than 500 patents, Land founded the Rowland Institute of Science in 1960 and devoted his time to it after his retirement from Polaroid in 1980.
Bibliography
See biographies by S. McPartland (1993) and V. K. McElheny (1999).
| Quotes By: Edwin H. Land |
Quotes:
"The bottom line is in heaven."
"Politeness is the slow poison of collaboration."
"Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity."
"The essential part of creativity is not being afraid to fail."
| Wikipedia: Edwin H. Land |
| Edwin Herbert Land | |
|---|---|
 Edwin Herbert Land
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| Born | May 7, 1909 Bridgeport, Connecticut |
| Died | March 1, 1991 (aged 81) Cambridge, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | polarizing light |
| Notable awards | Perkin Medal 1974 |
Edwin Herbert Land (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. 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.
Contents |
Bioqraphy
Early years
Edwin was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut to Harry and Helen Land. His father owned a scrap metal yard. He attended the Norwich Free Academy at Norwich, Connecticut, a semi-private high school, and graduated in the class of 1927. The library there was posthumously named for him, having been funded by grants from his family. He studied chemistry at Harvard. After his freshman year, he left Harvard for New York City.
In New York City, he invented the first inexpensive filters capable of polarizing light, Polaroid film. Because he was not associated with an educational institution, he lacked the tools of a proper laboratory, making this a difficult endeavor. Instead, he would sneak into a laboratory at Columbia University late at night to use their equipment.[1] He also availed himself of the New York City 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 micrometre-sized polarizing crystals that were coaxed into perfect alignment with each other.
After developing a polarizing film, Edwin Land returned to Harvard. However, he still did not finish his studies or receive a degree. 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.[2] Often his wife, at the prodding of his instructor, would extract from him the answers to homework problems. She would then write up the homework and hand it in so he could receive credit and not fail the course.
Mr. Land first approached young "ad man", in Boston, one Arthur M. Menadier with solicitation to be the "marketer of record" for his new invention the instant camera now Polaroid and A.M.M. did, in retirement, later admit to regretting not accepting such "account". A.M.M. was then professionally engrossed in study of specifics of photography and lenses and films and f-stops and depth of field and color separtation needed to be a long termer in industry. (family legend)
Land's company
In 1932 he established the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories together with his Harvard physics instructor to commercialize his polarizing technology. Wheelwright, his instructor, 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 Vectrograph which revealed camouflaged enemy positions in aerial photography.
A little more than three years later, on February 21, 1947, Edwin Land demonstrated an instant camera and associated film. 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 Boston's Jordan Marsh department store 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.[2] He once wore the same clothes for eighteen days straight while solving problems with the commercial production of polarizing film.[2] 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.
Later years
In the 1950s, Edwin Land and his team helped design the optics of the revolutionary Lockheed U-2 spy plane. Also in this decade, Land first discovered a two-color system for projecting the entire spectrum of hues with only two colors of projecting light (he later found more specifically that one could achieve the same effect using very narrow bands of 500 nm and 557 nm light). Some of this work was later incorporated in his Retinex theory of color vision. In 1957, Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate, and Edwin H. Land Blvd., a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was later named in his memory. The street forms the beginning of Memorial Drive, where the Polaroid company building was located.
In the early 1970s, Land attempted to explain the previously known phenomenon of color constancy with his Retinex theory. His popular demonstrations of color constancy raised much interest in the concept. He considered his leadership towards the development of integral instant color photography — the SX-70 film and camera — to be his crowning achievement.
Although 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". Despite the fact that he held no formal degree, employees, friends, and the press respected his scientific accomplishments by calling him Dr. Land. The only exception was the Wall Street Journal, which refused to use that honorific title throughout his lifetime.[2]
Land often made technical and management decisions based on what he felt was right as both a scientist and a humanist, much to the chagrin of Wall Street and his investors. From the beginning of his professional career, he hired women and trained them to be research scientists. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, he led Polaroid to the forefront of the affirmative action movement.
Despite the tremendous success of his instant cameras, Land's unsuccessful Polavision instant movie system was a financial disaster, and he resigned as Chairman of Polaroid on March 6, 1980. In his retirement years, he founded the Rowland Institute for Science.
Death
Land died on March 1, 1991 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 81. Upon his death, his personal assistant shredded his personal papers and notes.
Public service
Land was:[3]
- A member of the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) 1957–59 and a Consultant-at-Large of PSAC from 1960–1973.
- A member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) 1961–77.
- A member of the National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress 1964–66.
- A member of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television 1966–67.
- A Trustee of the Ford Foundation 1967–1975.
Honors
Although Land never received a formal degree, he received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Willams College, Tufts College, Washington University, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, University of Massachusetts, Brandeis University and many others. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award given to a U.S. citizen, in 1963 for his work in optics. He held 535 patents, compared with Thomas Edison's 1,097 American patents (note to staff, Edison held slightly less than 1000 patents but over one thousand inventions).[2] In 1977 he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1988 Land was awarded the National Medal of Technology for "the invention, development and marketing of instant photography".
See also
Notes
- ^ World of Physics. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale
- ^ a b c d e Wensberg, Peter C. (1987-09). Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It. Houghton Mifflin (T). pp. 258. ISBN 0395421144.
- ^ "EDWIN H. LAND: SCIENCE, AND PUBLIC POLICY", by Richard L. Garwin, The Irish Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, 1993
- ^ Neil Ribe; Friedrich Steinle (2002-07). "Exploratory Experimentation: Goethe, Land, and Color Theory". Physics Today 55 (7): 43–49. doi:. http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_55/iss_7/43_1.shtml. Retrieved 2008-12-19.
References
- Earls, Alan R. and Rohani, Nasrin (2005), Polaroid Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, S.C., ISBN ISBN 0-738-53699-7
- Wensberg, P. C. (1987) Land's Polaroid: a company and the man who invented it Houghton Mifflin, New York, ISBN 0-395-42114-4
- McElheny, Victor K. (1999) Edwin Herbert Land: May 7, 1909-March 1, 1991 National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., ISBN 0-309-06644-1
Bibliography
- Land; Daw (1962), "Binocular Combination of Projected Images.", Science 138 (3540): 589–590, 1962 Nov 2, doi:, PMID 17832004
- Land; Hunt (1936), "THE USE OF POLARIZED LIGHT IN THE SIMULTANEOUS COMPARISON OF RETINALLY AND CORTICALLY FUSED COLORS.", Science 83 (2152): 309, 1936 Mar 27, doi:, PMID 17749392
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Edwin H. Land |
- Short biography
- "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", Ninth Annual Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. May 22, 1957
- Edwin Herbert Land
- Polaroid Land Camera
Patents
- US2,435,720—Apparatus for exposing and processing photographic film
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