Massachusetts: Originally, the firm was founded in 1932 as Land–Wheelwright Laboratories. Then, the firm was incorporated again in 1937 as the Polaroid Corporation.
Edwin Land was the grandson of Avram and Ella Salmononvitch—Jewish immigrants from Russia—whose last name was morphed to “Land” on Ellis Island.
Bridgeport, Connecticut–bred, Land was an on–again, off–again undergrad at Harvard. In the off–again stage, he was busy back home in the NY metropolitan area, inventing applications for polarized light. Out of Harvard and in need of a lab, via friends he somehow gained ongoing “untraditional access” to Columbia University’s physics lab uptown in Morningside Heights, Manhattan.
Land invented –
• inexpensive filters for polarizing light;
• a practical system of in–camera instant film processing; and
• his “retinex” theory of color vision
In the 1950s, Land became head of the Intelligence Section of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Technological Capabilities Panel. The section conceived the (high–flying) U–2 surveillance plane. Subsequently, in 1963 Land was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Land – “An essential component of creativity, is not being afraid to fail”