![]() Not surprisingly then, Land was an eloquent spruiker of his company and his inventions, helped by the fact that he possessed piercing eyes that gave him considerable physical presence as well. He was also a musician – in possession of an excellent baritone voice – and a lover of both art and literature.Īs Polaroid evolved into one of America’s leading technology corporations – pretty much the Apple of its day – Land became known for his erudite and thoughtful annual letters to shareholders, which always focused more on his grand visions than the minutiae of the accounts. ![]() Most articles about Edwin Land concentrate on his exceptional scientific prowess – especially his tackling of the many challenges of creating a self-developing print – but he was also a very fine photographer, another of his talents fostered by Clarence Kennedy (also a gifted photographer). (Image credit: Polaroid Corporation) Multi-talented Ironically, in 1934, one of Land’s very first customers for polarising filters was Eastman Kodak. Keenly aware of the commercial potential of all his inventions, Land was careful to patent everything that could prove useful when he much later took on the might of Kodak over instant film infringements and won. His sheet polariser was patented on 26 April 1929. The year was 1928 and Edwin was still only 19. This breakthrough enabled Land to make the world’s first synthetic sheet polariser, a product with a myriad of applications including windows and, of course, sunglasses. the same principle subsequently applied to his instant film processing reagent. He also found that the best way to obtain an even dispersion of the sub-microscopic crystals was to suspend them in a thick jelly-like substance that was then applied to the sheet. He worked out that a better approach was to use much smaller crystals – in fact, several billion of them per square centimetre – and then coat them in a thin layer onto a transparent sheet. Edwin Land’s solution illustrates his capacity for lateral thought. However, the problem with herapathite was that it wasn’t possible to grow the crystals any longer than about three millimetres, which was too small to be of any use. Yes, there were 8x10-inch Polaroid instant print films (and it’s also since been revived). Most medium format SLR camera systems included a Polaroid back for this purpose and holders were available for 4x5-inch and 8x10-inch large format cameras. Of course, today’s market is essentially niche and concentrates largely on the fun factor, but at the height of the instant print’s popularity it was also seen as a very fashionable art medium – championed by the likes of Andy Warhol and David Hockney – and it was widely used by professional photographers for checking focus and exposure before committing a shot to film. ![]() Is it the fascination with the idea of a unique one-off print? Or is it simply the whole experience of watching an image slowly form before your very eyes, as if by magic? Regardless, the instant camera was a hit from the very start and has remained so ever since, bouncing back from a lull caused by everybody focusing their attentions on digital imaging. Click here to find out more about Australian Camera magazine, including how you can subscribe to the print issues or buy digital editions. In the nine decades between Tesla’s prophecy and the smartphone’s ubiquity, he was joined by several other great minds in anticipating handheld connectedness that would distract us from real life.This article originally appeared in Australian Camera magazine, one of Digital Camera World's sister titles Down Under. Here, Tesla envisions elements of the internet, video conferencing, and personal electronic devices, while whiffing only on the continued popularity of vests. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. ![]() When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. Nikola Tesla was all of those, and in January of 1926, Collier’s magazine published a prediction from the Serbian-American physicist and inventor that proved remarkably prescient. Way back in 1926, the year of the first transatlantic telephone call, it would have taken a true genius, a technological wizard, a thinker unconstrained by the limitations of reality, to foresee the modern smartphone. ![]()
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