(6 of 11)
It took another nine years for Land to perfect the polarizing process and decide how it could be marketed. As with most of his other projects, Land tried to start big. In 1937 he set up the Polaroid Corp. in a former tobacco wholesaler's building on Boston's Columbus Avenue with the plan of selling Detroit's automakers on the idea of putting his polarizers in the sun visors and headlights of all new cars. Land was convinced that the reduced glare would make night driving much safer. But manufacturers noted that the polarizing sheets deteriorated when exposed to heat, and they showed little interest. Even so, the idea is still not completely dead. In the past few years, experiments with polarized headlights have been sponsored by the U.S. and Canadian governments. Depending on their outcome, the first Land dream might still come true.
Fortunately for both inventor and company, Polaroid managed to market its idea in other forms. Polaroid nonglare sunglasses, introduced in 1937, fared well with consumers, and the company still sells 25 million pairs of lenses annually. Polaroid grew quickly during World War II, producing goggles, glasses and filters, but it sagged after the war ended. In 1947 the company lost $2,000,000; it sorely needed to develop new products. Naturally, Land was ready with an idea.
Expensive Toy. While vacationing in Santa Fe with his family in 1943, Land had his three-year-old daughter Jennifer pose for some pictures on a walk. The child asked how long it would be until she could see them. Land, who had been interested in photography since childhood, immediately began wondering how photos might be developed and printed right inside the camera. He now claims jokingly that by the time he and Jennifer returned from their walk, he had solved all the problems "except for the ones that it has taken from 1943 to 1972 to solve." Actually, he managed to work out enough of the bugs to announce the invention of "instant photography" to an amazed group of optical scientists early in 1947 and to put the first Polaroid Land camera on sale late in 1948. The "Model 95" weighed nearly 4 lbs., produced sepia-toned pictures of varying quality and retailed for $89.75.
The basic developing process in the Model 95 has been greatly refined but remains the same even in Polaroid's new small camera. A negative is exposed, then brought into contact with a positive print sheet, and both are drawn between a pair of rollers. In the process, a small pod of jelly-like chemicals attached to the positive is ruptured and spread across the sheet. Within seconds, the finished picture is ready. The other new feature of the Model 95 was Land's "exposure value system," which reduced the previously complex calculation of shutter speed and lens opening to a simple dial adjustment. Variations of it have since become standard on all but the most inexpensive cameras.