The Story of Polaroid

I watched this video when it first appeared on Youtube several years ago. Rewatched it last night. It's long but, quite interesting...

Polaroid was a big employer up here, on the then Route 128 tech beltway.

Commuting on same highway, it was sad to see the two empty buildings that i know of siting until demolition and rebirth.

The same myth telling as usual...

In depicting that "genius" Land, the lecturer omits that Land used for amateur photography a process already invented independently of each other at Agfa and Gevaert in Europe some years before and applied at non-amateur products. The war and its outcome though likely prohibited already just the idea of what Land later would offer the amateur photographer.

And, not to be surprised, he omits truth again when it comes to The Impossible Project.

Wow… harsh criticism.

Even if all he did was commercialize existing knowledge for use by amateur and professional photographers… then he was a genius.

AgX said:

And, not to be surprised, he omits truth again when it comes to The Impossible Project.

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What is the misrepresentation here?

AgX, the man could think outside of the box. Please explain what truths he missed about The Impossible Project?

I appreciate the innovative character of Land. And as I tried to point out, here in Europe one most likely did not, or could not even think of such camera system.
But still one must see his invention in context of what already had been developed and on what he could build upon, even for free. And to be fair one could even go beyond Gevaert and Agfa, back into 19th century to first ideas on this process.


To me it seems that lecturer read a book about Land and an article about Impossible and from this made his lecture. A lecture that was entertaining nonetheless for the uniniated.

Concerning Impossible, after launching that firm they wrote their own hagiography, which is in contrast to what was said before. And the idea to and technical knowledge how starting that endeavour come from the outside and long before that special day, hinted at in that lecture.

AgX said:

I appreciate the innovative character of Land. And as I tried to point out, here in Europe one most likely did not, or could not even think of such camera system.
But still one must see his invention in context of what already had been developed and on what he could build upon, even for free. And to be fair one could even go beyond Gevaert and Agfa, back into 19th century to first ideas on this process.


To me it seems that lecturer read a book about Land and an article about Impossible and from this made his lecture. A lecture that was entertaining nonetheless for the uniniated.

Concerning Impossible, after launching that firm they wrote their own hagiography, which is in contrast to what was said before. And the idea to and technical knowledge how starting that endeavour come from the outside and long before that special day, hinted at in that lecture.

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Did you watch the entire video? At the end of the video, he has a Q&A session. He explains where he did all his research. He had access to thousands upon thousands of documents in Polaroids archive... So, he didn't just read a book.

AgX... Have you read Land/Polaroid's patents? I just skimmed two: the earliest US for peel-apart film monochrome and the earliest for color. It would take you a lot more verbiage to show that he "stole" existing technology. Per these patents he integrated a lot of existing technology bits and pieces in a way never before integrated.

In the initial patent for monochrome that I mentioned, there are 11 US patents from 1914-1946 cited (about a third in Land's name and others that I didn't look at that may or may not be assigned to Polaroid Corp) and three foreign patents cited - a 1942 FR and two 1930 GB patents.

In the first patent for color that I mentioned, here are 17 US patents from 1937-1959 cited (I didn't look to see if any may or may not be assigned to Polaroid Corp) and five foreign patents cited - two 1954 FR and three GB patents from 1939*1950.

I think Land and Polaroid Corporation were quite transparent about their use of existing patented knowledge, many that had earlier been abandon, but this is so far in the noise compared to the genius of his integration and/or true inventions. I wouldn't expect anyone but the utmost diletant to be concerned at this detail.

Andrew, I had no sound for that video but had to resort to automated transcription. Based on these I did not read anything outstanding he could not have read in some book on Land and Polaroid. If he did bother more than that I wonder why he did not mention the context out of which such an idea arose. Just me here at Apug presented once much more on this than he did.

Brian, I did not say Land stole anything. One can get things for free without stealing them.
My point is that in all lectures etc. on Land that come to my mind he is decribed as genius that suddenly got an idea, all out of his own.

AgX said:

My point is that in all lectures etc. on Land that come to my mind he is decribed (sic) as genius that suddenly got an idea, all out of his own.

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On that you might be picking nits.

p.s. In hindsight I never should have used the word "stole". I apologize if that cast any undeserved aspersions.