Edwin Land
Edwin Land
Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRIwas 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. His Polaroid instant camera, which went on sale in late 1948, made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth7 May 1909
CityBridgeport, CT
CountryUnited States of America
An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off.
There's no scientist I know who wouldn't rather be a charlatan. And when circumstances allow you to be both, why it's great fun!
I believe each incoming freshman [in college] must be started at once on his own research project if we are to preserve his secret dream of greatness and make it come true.
We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents.
Aladdin in his most intoxicated moments would never have dreamed of asking his [djinn] for [a polaroid] ... It's utterly new in concept and appearance, utilizing an utterly revolutionary flash system, an utterly revolutionary viewing system, utterly revolutionary electronics, and utterly revolutionary film structure.
[The Polaroid camera is] a system that will be a partner in perception, enabling us to see the objects in the world around us more vividly than we can see them without it, a system to be an aid to memory and a tool for exploration.
Who can object to a monopoly when any new company, if it is built around a scientific nucleus, can create a new monopoly of its own by creating a wholly new field?
I believe that each young person is different from any other who has ever lived, as different as his fingerprints: that he could bring to the world a wonderful and special way of solving unsolved problems, that in his special way, he can be great.
[A Polaroid camera] places before you a thing that is more of the thing than the thing was.
As I visualize it, the business of the future will be a scientific, social and economic unit. It will be vigorously creative in pure science where its contributions will compare with those of the universities.
The world belongs to the articulate.
The first thing you do is teach the person to feel that the vision is very important and nearly impossible. That draws out the drive in the winner.
Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
We took on things which people might think would take a year or two. They weren't particularly hard. What was hard was believing they weren't hard.