A Triumph of Genius

Maxims

“Optimism is a moral duty.”

“There’s a rule they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School: if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess.”

“Do not undertake a program unless the goal is manifestly important and its achievement is nearly impossible.”

“If you are right, the facts at the moment don’t matter because in due course the facts will catch up with you.”

“What the physical sciences teach the social sciences is how to fail without a sense of guilt.”

Origins & Youth

Whatever the reason, Harry’s aloofness seemed eventually to infect Edwin, who by young adulthood had distanced himself from his larger family, as well as from his Jewish ancestry. He told relatives that he had given up the Jewish faith for business reasons.

Land did his best to “keep … his origins obscure … [and to] cultivate a mystery [leaving] few clues to his boyhood.”8 At his father Harry’s funeral, a nephew asked Uncle Edwin why he didn’t participate more in family gatherings. His answer was “my work is my life.”9…

…the one thing that became unquestionably clear early on was that Edwin Land was blessed with a gifted intellect and an inquisitive mind. When Edwin was about five, Harry brought home a new Gramophone, then the state of the art for phonographs. Edwin was too curious about the device to resist disassembling it. Dressed in Dr. Dentons, one-piece pajamas with a flap in the back, he proceeded to lay out all the pieces of the machine on the living room rug. Unfortunately, the young boy did not leave sufficient time for the reassembly, and when Harry came home, the back flap of the pajamas came down, and a proper spanking ensued. The episode had a long-standing effect on the budding scientist. “From then on … nothing or nobody could stop me from carrying through the execution of an experiment,”10 a promise that clearly led to what would become his famous propensity for nonstop and intense experimental work.11…

Land later described the device as “the color television of the 1850s,” noting that “no respectable home would be without a kaleidoscope in the middle of the library.”

Land, still a preteen, began to read about optical science and discovered the textbook Physical Optics by Robert Wood, a professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University who was well known as “an experimenter of great ingenuity in the areas of optics, light, electricity and photography.”17 Land slept with Wood’s book under his pillow and read it “nightly in the way that our forefathers read the Bible.”18 It was an intellectual awakening that would shape his life.

…what really set him apart was his work in the physics lab, where he began investigating the phenomenon of polarized light. His teacher, Raymond Case, recalled that by Land’s senior year, “he was already working at a level where I couldn’t help him.”23 The inscription under Land’s graduation photograph in the 1926 Norwich Free Academy yearbook reads, “Ed is some star in his studies and we are sure that he will make a name for himself and Alma Mater in college.”24 Only seventeen years old, Land graduated with “near-perfect marks” and enrolled that fall at Harvard University. His stay at Harvard, however, was to be brief.

Land had become completely preoccupied with the subject. Years later he would recall “the full vividness of my own need at the age of seventeen to do something scientifically significant and tangibly demonstrable. At the age in which each week seems like a year … I decided that the great opportunity was polarized light.”

Polarizer Obsession

At the end of a single semester, it had become apparent to him that the pursuit of a practical polarizer was a more pressing problem and worthwhile objective than his education, and so he “stunned family and friends” by taking a leave of absence to concentrate on his research.29 As Thomas Edison had done decades earlier, Land moved to New York and immersed himself in a study of the scientific literature on optics in the Great Reading Room of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue.

This consuming absorption would remain at the heart of Land’s work over the rest of his career. A lifelong motto was: “If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing to excess.”32 Land had learned early on that total engrossment was the best way for him to work. He strongly believed that this kind of concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others.

…his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.”

“Land has very little respect for the forces of nature,” a colleague noted. “He wants to rearrange the forces of nature, and just goes ahead and does it.”35…

Land admitted that many of his early experiments were conducted at Columbia clandestinely. He and Terre would climb out a hallway window and then along a ledge on the outside of the building. They would climb back into a physics laboratory window and then proceed to remove the hinges from a locked cabinet to get at the necessary equipment.39 Much later, after he demonstrated the results of some experiments to the professor in charge, Land was finally given a key to the facility.40…

…he told his father, “I think I know how to take the glare out of car headlights… . Can I borrow five thousand dollars to get a business going?” Harry was supportive and agreed to give Edwin the money. But he was concerned that his young son might not be able to fend for himself in the business world. Land recalled his father warning him to “watch out. Once you develop it, the big companies will take it away from you.”45 It was advice that Land took to heart, and filed away for future use.

Edwin Land had solved a problem that had eluded some of the greatest minds in the world of physics for almost a century. He was 19 years old.

…years later, holding up a piece of his plastic polarizer for some students, he remarked how “it seems so plausible now for these to exist. At that time, it was the most exciting fantasy in the domain of physics that an adolescent could have.”

It is a curious property of research activity that after a problem has been solved the solution usually seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked over it for years. As they regard their finished work they cannot help wonder why a simple, rational process that can be performed in a day took them, rational people, ten years to develop.

Company Formation

…this was to be a pivotal moment in Land’s life and career. Together, Silver and Brown would provide Land with the kind of diligent and savvy guidance someone of Land’s creativity so desperately needs. Brown would go on to serve Land as his principal patent attorney for nearly four decades. Silver would become Land’s principal legal and business advisor for the rest of Land’s life.

Land’s “exciting new polarizer had many advantages: it was inexpensive, thin and could be cut easily to any size and shape to fit the application.”

…his studies were not going as well. He had trouble handing in lab reports on time, causing Wheelwright to appeal to his young wife for help. Exasperated, Wheelwright told Terre that Land rapidly lost interest in his lessons. He would work on a lab assignment “as long as he doesn’t understand it, but as soon as he understands it he wants somebody else to do it.”66 For Land, the intellectual exercise was done at that point, and he was on to the next problem. Writing up the results was, for him, a waste of time.

Despite Land’s status as a bit of a maverick student, there was a clear recognition in the Harvard physics department that he was doing important work. As a result, he was asked to make a presentation to the department’s regular colloquium. On February 8, 1932, Edwin Land became the first—and, for sixty-seven years thereafter, the only—undergraduate in the history of the Harvard physics department to do so.

Wheelwright began to become disenchanted with the “intellectual snobs” who failed to recognize the significance of what Land was up to. It eroded his belief in and his commitment to the academic path he was pursuing. Wheelwright began to wonder whether it was worth working for his doctorate, instead of going out into the real world and actually doing something.

…at the end of the spring term in 1932, Land and Wheelwright both left Harvard without their degrees, and set up shop in a rented room in Cambridge. The company was to be known as Land-Wheelwright Laboratories.

Land had been granted his first patent on his polarizer. It was U.S. Patent 1,918,848, Polarizing Refracting Bodies.

Land was not alone in his pursuit of a solution to automobile headlight glare through the use of polarizers. Lewis Warrington Chubb, the director of research at the Westinghouse Electric Company, had filed an application for a patent broadly covering the concept of using anti-glare polarizers for automobile headlights.

…given Chubb’s status in the industrial world, Polarized Lights had more relationships and easier access to key business partners than Land’s fledgling company.

Land was in “a very formidable patent situation,” wrote one Kodak attorney. Another wrote, “We are strongly of the opinion that Chubb is not entitled to claims dominating the polarizing sheet material itself, and accordingly we do not believe that Chubb can become a dominant factor in the field which the Kodak Company contemplates entering.”

Land had to prove that his company could deliver its polarizer sheeting in sufficient quantity. Over that summer, Land was still able to produce only relatively small pieces at a time, the largest being only eight inches by eleven inches.

Eastman Kodak had become Land’s very first significant customer.

We had air mattresses on the floor in the lab, and had food sent in, and after working for 20 or 40 hours a man would fall down and we would slip a mattress under him as he fell.

Land had successfully taken his invention from the laboratory to the world of commerce. His company had an actual product to sell and had sold it. Land’s friend, Clarence Kennedy, an art professor at Smith College, had an idea for a name. Land liked the suggestion, and called his new product: polaroid.

Market Breakthroughs

Even before the deal for polarized camera filters with Eastman Kodak was finalized, Julius Silver and Tuttle had discussed prices and quantities for sunglass production with Kodak. But Wheelwright had contacts at American Optical that would enable Land to approach the company without any help from Kodak, and so Land opted to go it alone.2…

He rented a room on the sunny side of the hotel and arrived carrying nothing but a bowl full of goldfish. When the American Optical representative came to the room, Land showed him the bowl, which he had placed on a windowsill in the full glare of sunlight. “Can you see any fish?” Land asked. Of course, the man could not—until Land held a piece of polarized material in front of the fishbowl. The American Optical executive, who had seen every version of sunglasses on the market, exclaimed that “he had never seen anything like this.”5…

A pair sold for $3.75 ($64.30 in 2014 dollars).

Land also came up with a more fanciful version—adjustable sunglasses that allowed the wearer to regulate the degree of glare screened out by using a pair of polarized lenses, one movable and rotating on top of another fixed lens. While it proved to be unsuccessful in the sunglasses market, this configuration has proven to be very useful in photography to this day.

He sent a sample of the material to Robert Wood, the scientist whose early work had so inspired him.8 Wood conducted experiments on it that confirmed its polarizing properties, a triumphant validation for Land.

In order for every motorist to get the benefit of the polarizers, every car on the road would have to be equipped. This meant that every windshield and every headlight on every automobile would have to be outfitted, a daunting and expensive task. The alternative of requiring every driver to wear special polarized glasses seemed unrealistic.

Land decided to take a new approach to influence Detroit. He thought that if he publicized the potential benefits of the technology, perhaps he could put pressure from the public on the automobile industry, which in time might lead to governmental intervention…

The now twenty-six-year-old Land had the opportunity to indulge his inner showman for the second time in his young career.

Land’s publicity offensive was successful. Spearing called Land’s new substance “amazing” and reported on how it “thrilled the group of scientists and newspaper men” who were present.19 Another New York Times reporter wrote: “All who witnessed the demonstration … regarded it as one of the most remarkable inventions in many years of optical development work.”

Land employed a unique strategy for identifying good employment prospects. “I don’t care what the people know if they’re willing to work hard,” he once told Wheelwright, “and they consider it a pleasure to come here and work.”

When I meet someone for the first time, often I can tell right away whether he may be a potential scientist. In talking to this person, how much is he ahead of you? When you draw a breath to say the next thing, does he know what you are going to say before you say it? Does he delight in the construction you are making? Does he turn the conversation quite subtly because he perceives where it is going and wishes it to go somewhere else? Not all scientists are that alert. There are many scientists who, for all their marvelous training, are just plain dull. You sit with them and nothing is happening. They have been stultified somehow and the world is going by them.25…

Rogers later recalled that Land had quickly sized him up, giving him the impression that Land “could see into my head. It was really a kind of interesting sensation of having your head briefly searched for content.”28 Rogers took a pay cut to $10 a week when he joined Land’s operation, working in the dusty facility as a production assistant in manufacturing the company’s plastic sheet polarizers.

Land renewed his assault on the automotive industry, appearing before the semiannual meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers to demonstrate that with his polarized material, “night driving would approach the comfort and safety of day driving.”

There had been previous unsuccessful proposals for raising further capital, including a 1934 deal for Kodak to take over the company that came very close to being signed. But the two young entrepreneurs backed out when it appeared that they would have to move their operation, and themselves, to Rochester. Of even more concern was the impression they got that the more senior research scientists at Kodak intended to exercise a paternal control over them, taking away their research independence and assigning them to projects of Kodak’s choosing.

Land entered into a ten-year employment contract, and he and Wheelwright and Terre assigned to the new corporation all of their patents and patent applications. Although the investors would own about half of the new corporation, through a complicated stock voting arrangement devised by Silver, Land retained complete control of the company.

Silver offered Wheelwright ten percent.38 Wheelwright accepted, and never complained thereafter.

With pressure mounting, in 1939 the Automobile Manufacturers Association reached a cease-fire agreement with Polaroid. The association would initiate an engineering study to evaluate fully the headlight glare proposal. Polaroid and General Electric would conduct that study jointly.44 As it turned out, the entire effort was put on hold when World War II broke out, but at least there was now a formal framework for exploring the industry’s adoption of the concept.

…he articulated the essential attributes of the pioneers being honored that night: “a state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present, a great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive achievement.”

Wheelwright saw less and less of Land. Polaroid was clearly becoming Land’s enterprise in every way. Finally, with some encouragement from his brother, Wheelwright approached Land. The two spent a “very emotional” few days talking over the situation. Although Land urged him to stay, Wheelwright concluded that his departure would be “for the good of the company.”

McCune was “intrigued,” sensing some “fascinating” things about the company, he was a bit frustrated because it was difficult to learn much about Polaroid, other than that it was busy making polarized lenses for sunglasses. When McCune returned to New York, a telegram from Sage was waiting for him: “Think twice before you turn down Polaroid.”57 McCune joined Polaroid in late 1939…

War Innovation

Bush’s novel approach was to farm out the work on contracts to existing academic and industrial institutions, rather than trying to attract the talent into a centralized government effort, an approach that had been proven ineffective in the previous war.

More than 6,000 engineers and scientists participated; according to one estimate, this included more than two-thirds of all American physicists. Perhaps most notably, Bush took responsibility for following up on a letter President Roosevelt had received from Albert Einstein in 1939 advising him that a powerful new type of bomb could be constructed from the fission of a uranium isotope.

OSRD would exploit Land’s intellect and creativity by involving him in other projects well beyond Polaroid’s original area of expertise.

Land, however, was certain from the start that American involvement was inevitable. William McCune, who had attended that Christmas meeting, recalled that Land told his employees that he believed the war going on in Europe “was of much greater significance to the United States than most people felt.”63 Land predicted that the United States would be in the war within the next year. As a result, he had decided to make “a big change” in Polaroid’s focus. From that moment on, the company would devote itself to one sole purpose, “to win this war.”

…he was not motivated by the chance to profit from the war effort. In fact, he said that he didn’t expect to make much. His motivation, instead, was to combat “the disease that is spreading over the world,” one that “goes on for generations … [and] does not stop when war stops.”

Land “did not make clear whether he thought the disease was intolerance or totalitarianism. He may have been thinking of the anti-Semitism that drove his grandparents from Russia and now, decades later, was fueling Hitler’s ‘final solution.’”

Land, as he explained years later, was ready “to give up flexibility and freedom to get some specific things done. In war you beat the plowshare into a sword.” Land added, “whatever distaste a scientist may have for using science for military purposes is put aside when he is confronted by absolute evil.”

Two decades later, it was a pair of Polaroid night vision goggles that garnered publicity from being used in the surveillance conducted by Lebanese counterintelligence agents leading to the capture of notorious British spy Kim Philby.75…

Throughout the war, Land and his team repeatedly proved their willingness and ability to tackle special assignments.

When the officer asked for fifty pairs to cover the most critical landing situations in the battlefield, Land asked him how many pairs of goggles would be needed to supply all aviators then making landings in enemy waters. The officer thought 200 would do it. Land then suggested that, to save time, the officer stay around for a week so he could take the goggles with him. The officer was stunned, and asked Land if he was serious. Indeed he was. Land set to work with a young colleague, Louis Rosenblum. Nine days later, the officer left Polaroid with 200 sets of goggles, carried aboard his train for Washington, D.C., by “a retinue of porters.”

…during the Roosevelt-Willkie presidential election campaign. Land created an image for the audience to view and decided to have some fun with it. As he described it years later, “I had the glasses arranged so that if you closed one eye you saw the Democrat and if you closed the other one, you saw the Republican. I asked all the Democrats to close the left eye and the Republicans to close the right eye, and of course they all applauded.”

Thanks to this technological breakthrough, pilots flying as fast as 350 miles per hour over heavily fortified enemy targets or strategic locations could capture three-dimensional images that were later printed on photographic paper or as transparencies.84 These aerial photographs could reveal vital topographical details; they could “pierce such camouflage as false shadows and make-believe ‘gardens’ painted on roofs of war factories. Vividly they [could] show the contours of shorelines, cliffs, hills and valleys in enemy-held territory. Trees, ditches and bushes, important in providing cover, appear in full relief like an exact-scale model.”

Polaroid’s total commitment to the war effort led to a whole range of research projects and, ultimately, new products for the company.

The first synthesis of quinine was achieved under a Polaroid program set up by Land and conducted by a young Polaroid chemist named Robert Woodward, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize.88 Quinine, a substance found in the bark of the cinchona tree, was vital for the treatment of overseas personnel suffering from malaria.

Land had a jump-start on solving the problem because the crystals used in his early sheet polarizers were made of a compound that included quinine. When his supply dried up, Land set upon two simultaneous research programs: one to develop crystals for making sheet polarizers that didn’t require quinine and another to learn how to synthesize quinine.90 Eventually, both programs were successful, but the latter one became relevant to the war effort.

It was praised as an achievement that “chemists the world over have attempted for almost 100 years.”91 James Conant called it “a discovery which I think will stand as one of the landmarks of pure science in the history of American organic chemistry.”

…the Navy issued a contract with Polaroid for $7 million to develop a 1,000 pound guided bomb.94 Land posed a question to a top-secret team of six researchers that he sequestered from the rest of the company: “Why do bombs dropped from level flight at high altitude almost always miss the target even as large as a capital ship?”

Grey, a physicist who had worked on Land’s optics projects, posited an approach using a gyroscope to keep the bomb pointed in the right direction. Grey wrote later, “Immediately, Din [Land] understood the principle.”

The result of their efforts was the first heat-homing ordnance in history. Years later, the Air Force wanted to develop an air-to-air missile. Its original idea was to use radar. However, some military ordnance personnel familiar with Polaroid’s previous work convinced the officers in charge that since flying aircraft were, as McCune later noted, “pretty darn hot targets,” a heat-homing approach might be better suited.100 The ultimate result was the now familiar Sidewinder missile.

Just days later, when Japan unconditionally surrendered, Land’s interest in the war effort vanished as quickly as it had begun. His stated goal of winning the war had been achieved.

…the day after Japan laid down its arms, Land walked into McCune’s office.101 The Dove Project contract with the Navy had not yet been completed. Nonetheless, Land told McCune that he wanted to stop work on it and refocus his efforts and those of the rest of the company on a new frontier. The Dove Project was turned over to Eastman Kodak.102…

…when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, its crew were wearing special Polaroid adjustable goggles.

Although making a profit had not been one of Land’s motives, his company’s contributions to the war effort had been good for his business and its future. When the war had started, Polaroid’s gross annual revenues were about $1 million. By the time it ended, Polaroid’s business had grown to about $15 million annually.

One-Step Vision

Land had a penchant for bringing a variety of eclectic and unorthodox thinkers to Polaroid, giving them the basic equipment they needed for their research without much fretting about the short-term payoff, and just turning them loose for long periods of time… . Land generally left them alone, waiting for them to call him, or calling them in when he had a short term project that needed their special skills. This provided fertile ground for new ideas that might come to the fore.

…getting Detroit to adopt his anti-glare technology remained beyond his reach—the automobile companies considered it too expensive, too impractical, and, arguably, unnecessary. He did not give up easily, however. As Land later admitted, “I was too young, too romantic to stop.”

He described the advantages of his system and estimated the cost to manufacturers as only seven dollars per vehicle. If manufacturers wanted to pass the cost along to the consumer, they could probably charge thirty to eighty dollars.11 Land was convinced that the automobile industry exaggerated the cost and minimized the benefits of his system.

…look back over the history of important new improvements that we now take for granted in our day-to-day life, you will find, I believe, that each was introduced for obvious and overwhelming reasons, but that at the same time each of these improvements presented a number of minor disadvantages which may have seemed significant at the time the change was proposed but which we have now come to disregard. You will also find that the minor disadvantages have been balanced by a number of minor advantages to which little attention was given when the improvement was introduced. If pressed, I am sure we could all point out a number of minor disadvantages of such overwhelming improvements as the telephone, the electric light, or even the automobile. All of us could at the same time point out a great many minor advantages of these improvements beyond the obvious ones.

…the adoption of his system was fatally hampered by the fact that there was no competitive advantage for any car company in using it first. Since all cars needed to incorporate the technology as simultaneously as possible, it was either going to be all, either voluntarily or as directed by the government, or none.

…with no economic or competitive incentive, why bother with a system that clearly added costs and admittedly presented implementation issues? After more than two decades, Land reluctantly gave up the fight. But he learned one very important lesson. “I knew then that I would never go into a commercial field that put a barrier between us and the customer.”15 Rather than deal with other companies as intermediaries, he would market his innovative products directly to the public.

…the role of industry is to sense a deep human need, then bring science and technology to bear on filling that need. Any market already existing is inherently boring and dull.”16 Land, like Steve Jobs many decades later, believed that his company should “give people products they do not even know they want.”

Years later, Land recalled that his conception “was so real that [he] spent several hours on this description.”20 As his patent attorney listened, Land “was able to construct the whole scheme and define all the variables. It was a delightful scientific problem.”21…

If you are able to state a problem—any problem—and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved. Long before he puts the problem into words, the scientist knows how to confine his questions to ones that he thinks are answerable. He wouldn’t be able to formulate them otherwise. His taste, discernment, wisdom, shrewdness and experience have established within him an inner knowledge of what is feasible. However, you must pick a problem that is manifestly important. It must be important to you and your colleagues, and more important than anything else. You can’t necessarily separate the important from the impossible. If the problem is clearly very important, then time dwindles and all sorts of resources which have evolved to help you handle complex situations seem to fall into place letting you solve problems you never dreamed you could solve.

“You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.”

As McCune confided: “Everything we’ve done has always been a compromise to him, which has been almost intolerable.”

As Scientific American put it, “After you snap the shutter, eleven separate operations must be performed before you can see the finished dry print.”37 In all of these operations, the choice of chemicals, their temperature and concentration, and the timing of the sequential steps are all critical to the quality of the finished print. The developing and printing process can take thirty minutes or more from start to finish. Although in Land’s system the negative would be exposed in a camera through a lens in the same way as in conventional photography, “from there on everything is different because all of the [other] steps … [would be] subsumed into … [a] single one step.”38 For this reason, Land later decided to call his process one-step photography.39…

…until Land started his work in late 1943, little, if any, work had been done on diffusion transfer processes using the kind of high-sensitivity photographic materials suitable for making photographs. Weyde had indeed conducted some experiments using photographic emulsions, and even “obtained very good pictures with a soft gradation” that needed to be “well washed” to survive, but her work was never published.41 She never pursued those experiments…

Land approached Cyril “Sy” Staud, one of the Kodak scientists with whom he was involved in war activities.44 He asked his colleague for a supply of standard Kodak photographic emulsion without divulging anything about the purpose he intended to use it for.

It is impossible to overstate how many different ideas were postulated during this period and how many different approaches and techniques Land and his small crew experimented with. The problems were many, and each one would inevitably engender the proposal of several possible solutions. Every suggestion was dutifully recorded and carefully written up in hundreds of comprehensive disclosure reports collected by Donald Brown’s patent department. This voluminous, day-by-day collection is a testament to the scientific credo of trial and error, as well as to the organized effort Brown established to protect Polaroid’s intellectual property. Ultimately, “with a great deal of courage,” as Land would later confess, the pod was adopted for use as the component that would contain the processing solution. It would be used in every single one-step photographic system ever produced. Land loved to joke about all of the “young whippersnappers who get out of MIT, and the first thing they try to do when they come to the company is [to] eliminate the pod.”46…

…one of Land’s great strengths as a scientist, one that made him virtually indefatigable, was his understanding that to research necessarily meant to endure without discouragement the “error” part of the “trial and error” axiom. As he put it, “an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists [pursue] a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments [and make] it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they [get] the results they want.”47 This process was an exciting one for Land, and for his associates.

Land was effective in this endeavor not because he single-handedly came up with every idea and solved every problem. As he had already demonstrated in his early career, while he had many great and profound ideas of his own, he was also incredibly perceptive in identifying talent and in recognizing the germ of a great idea in others’ work. He could assemble and motivate members of a team to great synergistic effect. Knowing instinctively which ideas to pursue, he could guide the process to incorporate those individual contributions into the overall effort. One of his associates during that period described “the spirit, the joy, the excitement of working with Land… . He was a charismatic leader… . He [could] choose and train people to do the work just the way he wanted it done, [and could] select people to fill in the voids in his own scientific background.”

Polaroid Growth

Land “thinks that the photographic art is one in which patents have always played a dominant part and that it is an art in which apparently as many, if not more, patent conflicts have arisen as in any other field.”

…work on SX-70 continued in top secret. To virtually every Polaroid employee, as well as to the world at large, Polaroid’s primary activity was its continuing production of an assortment of polarizing apparatus, mostly for the military. In fact, demand continued to be so high that the company was straining to keep up.

…despite Land’s prediction to Brown that one-step photography would be the key to Polaroid’s future success, nothing was mentioned about the intense research being conducted in secret to perfect this revolutionary process.

…with the big corporation about to be let in on his latest big secret, Land’s father’s early admonition spurred him to action. Before Mees’ visit, Land had one of his patent attorneys do a review of the patent applications that were in the process of being prepared, so that he could identify those that “should be filed prior to the arrival of Dr. Mees.”

Before Land could utter the “wonderful phrase [he had prepared] about what great chemistry and all we had,” Mees held up a pod, and said, “Gentleman, this is the transcendent invention.”

As with his polarizer invention, Land’s fertile imagination had come up with a whole variety of possible applications for the new photographic process, even before its development had been completed.

On the one hand was his innate circumspection and secretive nature, compounded by his recognition that the project was still in the developmental stage and not fully protected by patents. On the other hand was his concern for the morale of his company’s employees, as well as his innate boyish enthusiasm for wanting to show off his new technology and its potential for Polaroid after the company’s long digression into the war effort. This latter impulse highlighted what was clearly becoming the trademark dichotomy of Land’s personality.

Land decided to stage a most unusual event—one as full of drama as possible.

I’m not free, in other words, to tell you anything about SX-70 for a couple of months, but what happens in this movie happens in heaven, and I can’t see why I am responsible for anything you learned from heaven. If you keep your wits about you, and if you’re good detectives in the way our magician taught us to be, you will see near the end of this movie something that may probably suggest to you what SX-70 is.

At one point in the film, an angel needs a passport photo. A large studio camera is set up, the shutter is snapped and, miraculously, the passport photo emerges directly from the camera. Immediately, without warning, the film stopped, and the house lights came back on. Standing on the stage was Land, who announced in a “tone of euphoria … ‘That’s SX-70!’”67 His audience left the theater more confused than informed.

Land began his presentation, and explained how Polaroid’s new camera “will make it possible for anyone to take pictures anywhere, without special equipment for developing and printing and without waiting for his films to be processed.”70 He then invited the president of the Optical Society to the front. Land had him pose and then took his photograph. He turned the crank and out came the sandwich of negative and positive. In a minute, Land peeled away the print, showed it to the audience, and handed it to the president. According to McCune, “It astonished everybody … everyone went wild.”71 Land, the showman, was once again working his magic.

…reaction from the press to the demonstration was as ecstatic as Land could have hoped. “There is nothing like this in the history of photography,” reported the New York Times.

Land had achieved the full measure of the promise George Eastman made in 1888: “Kodak Cameras—You press the button, we do the rest.”

Polaroid turned to Kodak to provide a negative containing the same standard emulsion for its commercial film, but this time coated on a paper base. Land had anticipated this arrangement when he made his 1946 presentation to Kodak’s Kenneth Mees. Sure enough, Kodak agreed to sell negative to Polaroid for a fixed price.

Kodak was interested in learning more about the process that Polaroid was working on. A special arrangement was made whereby some Kodak scientists, led by Henry Yutzy, would come to Cambridge so Polaroid could show them what it was doing. In terms of intellectual property, the agreement provided that any inventions made by Kodak in the photographic diffusion transfer field as a result of the work it was doing for Polaroid would belong to Polaroid. However, Kodak would have the option of using any of Polaroid’s technology in the document-copying field.4 It was the start of a unique, “cordial,” and cooperative relationship between the companies that would last for more than two decades.5 While Kodak’s management had no interest in getting directly into the field of one-step photography that Polaroid was pioneering, they were very supportive, mentoring Land and his colleagues.6…

…the first commercial camera, the Model 95 Polaroid Land Camera, was designed so that the negative and positive sandwich stayed inside the camera. After a minute, once the processing was done, the camera back would be opened and the print peeled off and lifted out. As it turned out, the kind of “idealized camera and film” system used in the demonstrations, which allowed for out-of-camera processing of peel-apart film, would not actually become practicable until the 1960s.

At the time, there was a fairly high federal excise tax of approximately twenty-five percent charged to purchasers of amateur cameras, “amateur” being defined as weighing less than four pounds.10 Since it was already apparent to Land and McCune that their camera was going to be relatively heavy anyway, they made sure that the Model 95 weighed more than four pounds, so it could avoid the tax.

Land’s initial philosophy was that Polaroid should manufacture as little as possible on its own.11 Instead, it would rely on other companies, including one to build cameras to its specifications.

Land soon learned that there were clear disadvantages to having outside companies involved. It made it more challenging for Polaroid to keep quality control to the very high standards Land required and to maintain control over the invaluable intellectual property that would inevitably be generated by the process of adapting Polaroid’s products from the laboratory to mass production. Over the years, these issues and others led Polaroid eventually to manufacture most of its own critical components, but at this initial stage the company had neither the desire nor the resources to do so.

…the article referred to Land, who had never returned to Harvard to earn even his bachelor’s degree, as “Dr. Land.” The previous year, Tufts College, which later became Tufts University in 1955, had given Land an honorary doctorate.15 Over the course of his career, he would collect fourteen additional doctorates, including one from his alma mater, Harvard, in 1957. From this point forward, and for the rest of his life, out of admiration and respect, most people within and outside of Polaroid would refer to him as “Dr. Land.”

By the end of 1959, Land would have a total of 245 patents to his name.

…only one of the first 200 patent applications his department filed on one-step photography technology was rejected by the U.S. Patent Office…

…the pressure was on for Polaroid to get its new system out in time for Christmas shopping in 1948. The company had actually posted a loss in 1947. The funds it had been receiving from reclaiming the excess profits taxes it had paid during the war were running out. The company had to introduce its new products before the end of the year or face dire fiscal consequences.

Despite the excitement generated in the press by the new technology, some retailers of cameras seemed to have lingering doubts about the forthcoming system. Was it more than a gadget? Was the price that Land had announced—“well under $100” for the camera and about $1.50 for a roll of eight pictures24—going to be prohibitively expensive? These reservations led to a wait-and-see attitude on the part of many dealers.

Due to the industry’s initial ambivalence, the decision had already been made not to sell through the normal distributors who dealt in photographic products. Instead, Polaroid would initially sell directly to a yet-to-be-determined retailer.

…only fifty cameras could be manufactured before the introduction date. The film, being made and assembled by hand at Polaroid’s facility in Cambridge, was also in very short supply. Nonetheless, there was nothing to do but proceed. A local department store chain—Jordan Marsh—was chosen to receive the initial supply of cameras and as many rolls of film as Polaroid could produce.

No one knew what was going to happen next.

A crowd grew quickly, and excitement spread “as people clamored to buy on the spot.”30 That initial shipment sold out in one day.

Kodak’s public posture on the successful introduction of the Polaroid Model 95 was one of proud, if somewhat dismissive, benevolence. The press reported Kodak as characterizing the new Polaroid system as “little more than a gimmick,” a “fad,” or “an ingenious toy with no real commercial possibilities” or “appeal.”

According to Land, who saw the telegram, it said: “Anything that is good for photography is good for Kodak. This is good for photography.”42…

This revolutionary advance in photography was possible only because during this period Land had taken one of his characteristic leaps of faith and made a personal commitment to translate an idea into reality, aided by the best and brightest of his researchers. Only someone with Land’s unique mind-set about the process of invention, and his innate confidence, could have undertaken such an endeavor.

For the special color photosensitive emulsions required for Rogers’ project, Land once again turned to his colleagues at Kodak. “By then, we were a very good customer [of Kodak’s] as well as friends,” recalled Land.

The understanding with Staud was, should anything come out of Polaroid’s investigations, a discussion would ensue about enlarging Kodak’s charter so that it could manufacture components for Polaroid’s color film as well.

Rogers knew very little about photographic color imaging, but just as Land had done decades earlier to come up with a practical polarizing material, Rogers began his quest in the library, learning all about the imaging chemistry used in conventional color film.

An art student of Land’s friend, Clarence Kennedy, she had absolutely no scientific training. Yet she apparently had the right stuff for Land and excelled in his laboratory under the tutelage and inspiration he provided. Howard Rogers once described how Morse was the perfect collaborator for Land because of the way she naturally embraced his scientific philosophy while matching his energy and compulsion.

Polaroid continued to improve and evolve its products. New cameras were developed and introduced with better focusing and exposure controls. A lower-priced model, the Highlander, was released in the mid-1950s, further broadening the popularity of one-step photography.

One of Land’s lifelong beliefs was in “the homogeneity and the continuum between science and art.”71 From his earliest publications, Land had stressed that there was an aesthetic utility to one-step photography.72 In addition to its utility for amateur photographers, Land also felt that one-step photography could provide a new artistic medium that a wide range of people could use. With the advances in film quality, he even believed that the professional photographic artist might find the process of interest. To promote this idea, Land formed an early alliance with the soon-to-become-famous black-and-white landscape photographer Ansel Adams.

Land engaged Adams as a consultant to Polaroid. According to Adams, Land’s “aim was to produce the most perfect picture-making process, and he felt that I, an exacting photographer, could provide important feedback. Since I balanced creative ideals with a practical approach, were I pleased with his product, so too might other creative and professional photographers.”

“In the early days of Polaroid,” he later recalled, “I found that the majority of professional and creative photographers dismissed the process as a gimmick. I was considered by my colleagues a bit eccentric because of my enthusiasm and championing of what they considered a beguiling toy.”76 But in the long run, Adams’ work with Polaroid over the years was a collaboration that resulted in many novel artistic applications of Land’s imaging technology, including ultra-large-format enlargements of Adams’ work that hang on the walls of museums around the world. Adams admitted that “many of … [my] most successful photographs from the 1950s onward have been made on Polaroid film.”77 Land also enlisted Adams to give courses in photography to Polaroid’s employees, which became a very popular attraction. Over the course of time, as the photographer’s fame soared, and the photographic improvements from Land’s laboratory kept coming, Adams contributed mightily toward Land’s process, helping one-step photography achieve, in Adams’ words, its place as “a most important branch of the tree of photography.”78…

Morse had possessed the intellect and the temperament to work at Land’s furious and intense pace. She once famously told Land: “A day is all too short. It always seems to me that we just really get warmed up to our problems and then it’s time to quit.”79 At a service for Morse held in the Memorial Church at Harvard, Land could not bring himself to speak and instead asked his other closest compatriot, soft-spoken Howard Rogers, to deliver a eulogy.

When the day came, Land did not disappoint. It was a record turnout for the event, with thirteen federal judges as the guests of honor. The speech was a tour de force. Filled with passion, inspired by his inimitable comprehension of and commitment to the inventive process, and informed by his unique personal experience in turning technological dreams into the reality of a successful business enterprise, Land attacked each of Melman’s theses with an articulate and intellectually compelling barrage…

There is something warm and appealing and cozy about this picture of the human race marching forward, locked arm in arm and mind to mind; and there are insecure ages in life and insecure people in life to whom this vision of progress by phalanx brings comfort and strength. But I, for one, think this is nonsense socially and scientifically… . I think whether outside science or within science there is no such thing as group originality or group creativity or group perspicacity. I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness… . Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds. Two minds may sometimes be better than one, provided that each of the two minds is working separately while the two are working together; yet three tend to become a crowd. *** Just as the great steps in scientific history are taken by the giants of the centuries when they slough off the tentacles of the group mind, so every significant step in each … single field, is taken by some individual who has freed himself from a way of thinking that is held by friends and associates who may be more intelligent, better educated, better disciplined, but who have not mastered the art of the fresh, clean look at the old, old knowledge. *** By very definition things which we care about most—the important breakthroughs—do not occur spontaneously in multiple because they are the result of a very special way of seeing, by a very special mind.

Rogers knew instinctively that he was on the right track. “When an idea like this comes that you’re sure is good, it spreads throughout your body,” Rogers explained years later. “I felt intoxicated, but more ‘all there’ than usual—almost as if I were a giant. Then I went to draw my new molecule for Land.”3…

Kodak Partnership

…in order for Kodak to be able to accommodate Polaroid, it was clear that a tremendous amount of preliminary work would be necessary. Polaroid would have to disclose its new, proprietary imaging chemistry to Kodak so that its engineers could figure out a way to incorporate it into the multiple layers that would have to be coated onto the paper base of the negative.

Each company had its own concerns. Polaroid was anxious to protect the valuable technical information it was going to have to disclose to Kodak. Some of this material was patented, but some of it comprised trade secrets that Polaroid would otherwise never have to disclose publicly. There was also the issue of how to treat any inventions made during the program—in the imaging chemistry, the operation of Polaroid’s one-step process, or Kodak’s film manufacturing techniques.

Kodak faced a difficult situation. Given its lucrative business of supplying material for Polaroid’s black-and-white film, Kodak wanted this new income stream but only if it would be rewarded financially for the significant investment of time, expertise, and resources required to help take Polaroid’s color process from the laboratory to the marketplace. However, as the undisputed king of amateur photography, Kodak was not going to be satisfied merely playing the role of a component supplier to Polaroid, rather than participating directly in a new and potentially significant part of the industry.

At this point, Polaroid was a fraction of the size of Kodak, the unchallenged dominant force of the worldwide photography industry. In 1956, Polaroid had net profits of $3.6 million on sales of just over $34 million.17 In contrast, Kodak boasted record earnings of $94 million on sales of $762 million.18 Kodak was twenty to thirty times the size of Polaroid and enjoyed unchallenged domination of the distribution channels for photographic products.

Because of its “commanding reach over the photographic marketplace,” Kodak had been subject to periodic antitrust scrutiny from the early twentieth century onward.

…the government’s pursuit of Kodak continued over the decades, forcing it to divest itself of various products and ancillary operations in 1916, and again in 1921. In December 1954, Kodak had settled a government antitrust suit against it by agreeing that it would no longer sell its film with the cost of developing and printing included in the price. Kodak had also been forced to share its previously secret process for developing Kodachrome film with any company interested in setting up a processing business.

“we just didn’t know how to give them a license that would make sure that they just didn’t swallow us up.”26 In looking back at the negotiation, Land was just as adamant. “We were not interested in making a supply arrangement with Kodak if through the course of doing that, our very future would be jeopardized because of the completely dominant position Kodak had in the photographic field and because of their unlimited resources.”

Due to his contributions during the war effort, Land was on the short list for inclusion in any intelligence activities that emerged as the postwar period evolved into the Cold War. For example, in the summer of 1951, Land led a team of eminent scientists asked to make suggestions on how America could improve its air defenses. Known as Project Charles, the group was organized by the president of MIT, James Killian. It included Jerome Wiesner, later President Kennedy’s science advisor, and the renowned mathematician and computer scientist John von Neumann, who had been one of the leading contributors to the Manhattan Project that had developed the atomic bomb.29…

Eisenhower believed that “modern weapons … made it easier for a hostile nation with a closed society [like the USSR] to plan an attack in secrecy and thus gain an advantage denied to the nation with an open society.”31…

This was a time when paranoia ran rampant in government circles in light of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ongoing investigations of “spying in high places.”33 Nevertheless, Eisenhower decided that to be effective, these scientists needed to know everything. Land was named as a member of the TCP’s steering committee and was put in charge of perhaps the most significant of the three areas of investigation around which the effort was structured, that of U.S. intelligence capabilities.

“As in every effort he undertook, Din Land was impetuous and demanding. He was determined that his country should have the best intelligence capabilities that science could provide and money could buy.”34 As he and his group investigated the condition of U.S. intelligence, Land became more and more distressed at the poor state of affairs that they found. “We would go in and interview generals and admirals in charge of intelligence and come away worried,” Land admitted years later. “Here we were, five or six young men, asking questions that these high-ranking officers couldn’t answer.”

Killian later remarked that Land’s group “had the leadership and brilliance to make lasting contributions to the technology of intelligence.”

Land told Eisenhower, “Well, why don’t we take a look and find out.”37 Land had heard General Doolittle predict that it would take ten years for the Air Force to get some kind of aerial surveillance over the Soviet Union.38 The challenge inspired Land to prove Doolittle wrong.

In early November 1954, Land advised Dulles of the plane’s unprecedented potential: “A single mission in clear weather can photograph in revealing detail a strip of Russia two hundred miles wide and twenty-five hundred miles long and produce four thousand sharp pictures.”42 “This seems to us the kind of action and technique that is right for the contemporary version of the CIA,” Land argued. “[It is] a modern and scientific way for an agency that is always supposed to be looking, to do its looking.”43…

Land later told a colleague that he had been able to convince Eisenhower, an avid golfer, of the potential of the U-2 by using an unusual analogy. Normally, Land explained to the president, a golfer could see a golf ball up to about 150 yards away. With the photography system designed for the U-2, that golf ball could be seen clearly at 2,000 yards.

The U-2 remains in service to this day. Land’s small group had accomplished a feat of supreme importance for America’s ongoing intelligence capability, one that would prove helpful to America’s intelligence efforts repeatedly over the coming decades. In fact, the effectiveness of the group was such that the CIA turned it into a permanent fixture, as an advisory instrument for the president. The “Land Panel,” as it came to be known, served every president for decades—Eisenhower…

Land also served on an elite panel, including Killian, General Doolittle, and Edward Purcell, which delineated a plan for a U.S. space program that eventually led to the formation of NASA.

…these efforts of Land over three decades of service represented a contribution to his country of inestimable value, all done in complete secrecy, without the fanfare that attended Land’s more public achievements in polarized light and one-step photography.

…in 1988, Judge William Webster, then serving as director of the CIA, praised Land’s service to his country, noting how his “ingenuity and resourcefulness have allowed us to uncover some of the closely held secrets of our adversaries. The contributions Dr. Land has made to national security are innumerable and the influence he has had on our present intelligence capabilities is unequaled.”

Land was “regarded by the Soviets as an absolutely prize package.”67 Given the opportunity, “they would grab him,” Baker believed. These circumstances surely contributed to Land’s evolving propensity for privacy, secrecy, and, what some described as, his reclusiveness.

It was the presidency of Richard Nixon, however, that ended, at least temporarily, Land’s service as a presidential advisor. During Nixon’s second term in office, Land’s name appeared on the list of 200 “enemies” of the Nixon administration, a fact disclosed by John Dean during his testimony to Congress during the Watergate scandal.

He resigned as a presidential advisor shortly thereafter, returning to serve President Ford when he replaced Nixon.

Kodak Rift

…this was a wholly inadequate description of the contribution that Kodak had actually made. While Rogers had clearly invented the dye developer process, and Polaroid had indeed made beautiful color prints in the laboratory before approaching Kodak, there had been a great deal more effort expended in adapting Polaroid’s experimental process into a commercial one. Kodak scientists, working in concert with their Polaroid colleagues, had made contributions to virtually every aspect and element of Polaroid’s color film. McCune later characterized it as a “really very extraordinary cooperation that took place between the top people in this field at Kodak and our people.”101 For whatever reason, however—vanity, jealousy, fear of Kodak’s enormity—Land was not willing to accord Kodak the public credit or appreciation it was surely due.

…many at Kodak were aware that Bunny Hanson, then the director of Kodak’s Color Photographic Division, had to be replaced as the head of the Kodak team working with Polaroid because he had come to the conclusion that they were pursuing an impossible mission, that Polaroid’s laboratory film could never be made into a commercial product.

…a sense of resentment toward Land and Polaroid began to grow out of this very public snub that would signal a dramatic change in the relationship between the two companies. It would have profound consequences for decades to come.

Despite the company’s success, and the optimistic projections, Land never lost sight of his ultimate objective of bringing the one-step system of his dream to reality. He described his continuing pursuit of the “potentialities” of Polaroid’s process in terms anyone could understand. “To us it’s just like bringing up a child. You don’t stop after you’ve had it.”4 He would not be satisfied until he reached the archetype he had envisioned on that day in Santa Fe.

Mikulka called Petersen and told him that he and his colleagues had a problem with the minutes because they reported that Land had agreed to grant licenses to Kodak.

According to Mikulka, although Land may have “expressed the opinion that in due course, under appropriate conditions, conceivably a license might be forthcoming to Eastman Kodak,” no firm commitment had been made at the meeting.

Kodak’s executives considered Land’s “recanting” of the agreement to be “a complete breach of faith.”

“When we seemed to be putting all our efforts into camera design, someone would say, ‘God damn it, Dr. Land, how about making the film?’ And he would reply, ‘Oh, that’s all taken care of, don’t worry about that.’ Actually, the film people couldn’t believe their ears.”

Land knew it was going to be a frightfully expensive undertaking. Fortunately, Polaroid had done so well in the early 1960s, and had amassed such a huge pile of cash, that it would be able to finance the entire project without incurring a penny of debt. Still, Land was betting his company on an effort to make his dream come true.

“One thing about Land—when he is doing something wild and risky, he is careful to insulate himself from anyone who’s critical. It’s very easy in the early stages to have a dream exploded.”

The other requirements Land imposed did not make that task any easier. He wanted a lens that would focus from a mere ten inches to infinity, as well as automated shutter and exposure electronics and film transport systems.

“the problem was, not just that … [something like that] didn’t yet exist, but that we didn’t even know the phenomenon that would give it the foundation to come into existence.” The effort to find a solution was, in Buckler’s experience, “the toughest job I’ve been involved with in my life,”

The genesis of his solution resided in one of chemistry’s basic principles. “You never start with nothing.

When asked later how he could have taken such a risk—having committed to a camera design and to building manufacturing facilities before a final solution to the project’s greatest challenge had been found—Land reminded a reporter of one of his basic tenets, steeped in his personal brand of indefatigable confidence: “If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on it’s just hard work.”

…the attitude at Kodak was no longer that of the paternalistic mentor anxious to help ambitious little Polaroid with its curiosity of a photographic system. The incredible success that Polaroid was experiencing in the market clearly had caught Kodak’s attention.

In Kodak’s view, the Land camera was … everything that a camera for the mass market should not be. It is too big, too expensive, and too difficult to use. A quick sequence of photographs is impossible. A Land camera user leaves behind a trail of refuse. Additional prints and enlargements are inconvenient to obtain. The film seems expensive.

Despite these reservations, Kodak executives had been, up to that point, delighted to be “taking a free ride on Polaroid’s coattails,” Land’s company having become a valuable customer accounting for $50 million a year in sales.7 As a result of the success of Polaroid’s Swinger, however, “Kodak’s chiefs were finally toppled from their complacency,” and a resolve to get directly into Polaroid’s field grew with renewed vigor.

Even years later, Land had never departed from his position that Polaroid’s color film had been wholly invented by Polaroid, which, he liked to point out, “took all the risks” involved in marketing it.13 It is not hard to see how some of the Kodak scientists, who had labored for five years to take Polaroid’s process from the laboratory to the marketplace, might resent Land’s view.

While Kodak was a diversified photographic and chemical behemoth, Polaroid was, in many respects, a one-trick pony. Instant photography was its only real business. Polaroid executives were not the only ones who recognized how challenging a proposition it would be to compete with Kodak. As Fortune characterized it, Kodak “towers so impressively over the core of its business, conventional amateur cameras and film, that it is difficult to understand why anybody else bothers.”

Within days, when Kodak secured and then reviewed one of the Polaroid Belgian patents in its entirety, it was able to make an educated guess that the new “system … would bring about a complete transfer of the image within the camera and would eliminate the in-camera waiting period for development, the special stripping outside the camera now required and the waste to be disposed of by the customer under the present system.”43 Thus, it appeared that Polaroid was about to rid its one-step process of all of the objectionable elements Kodak had long believed limited its commercial potential.

“Kodak finally realized what Polaroid knew from the start—that there are people who want to take good pictures, and other people who want to see them as fast as possible. The latter group is much larger than the former.”

Its marketing people concluded that the relatively high quantities Polaroid had projected for its negative needs—based upon its view that the new system would “greatly expand the amateur photographic market”—might indeed be correct.

Petersen reported that Polaroid’s new system “will have a tremendous [negative] impact on the growth of Kodak’s roll film business whenever it is introduced.”46 The dimension of that potential impact, as Kodak calculated it, was dramatic. Kodak executives were advised that P-110 could potentially reduce Kodak’s sale of roll film by 817 million units over a ten-year period, resulting in a sales loss in excess of $6 billion.

…the rights to produce a peel-apart film for use in Polaroid cameras “would be of little value to Kodak” in the time frame contemplated, mostly because it was agreed by both companies that the new system would eventually render peel-apart technology obsolete and soon supplant it.

…despite all the research that had been done at Kodak for more than a decade to find an alternative to Polaroid’s one-step technology, there was “no basis to say that Kodak could design a competing system of its own at all without licenses from Polaroid.”49 Petersen predicted that because of the Polaroid patents that were starting to issue, the integral one-step field might “not be open to Kodak” for two decades.

The view of the negotiating committee was that Polaroid was “stringing it along” with regard to the discussion of a license within the time frame Kodak wanted and that those discussions with Polaroid would remain “fruitless.”

Kodak was not going to undertake the project to help Polaroid with its new system. Polaroid was going to have to manufacture its own negative.

Miller, one of Eilers’ lieutenants, informed Polaroid that Kodak was immediately increasing the price for the Polacolor negative ten percent domestically and fifty percent internationally. Land was informed immediately. He was provided with an analysis concluding that “the impact that this price increase has on our costs is of considerable magnitude.”

Eilers sent a letter by registered mail to Land on April 22 terminating Kodak’s agreement to supply negatives for Polaroid’s Polacolor film, the only color film Polaroid had on the market.

That would end the supply of negative in April 1971, well before Polaroid could be in a position to replace the supply, either internally or from another company.

Land was stunned. The letter, especially Kodak’s new hard-nosed tactic, came as a complete surprise to Polaroid management.61 The issue was no longer the possibility of Kodak participating in Polaroid’s new venture. It had become Polaroid’s very survival if Kodak cut off its supply of color negative.

Eilers did not respond directly. Instead, Kodak fired another salvo by informing Polaroid in late May that it was unwilling to accept purchase orders submitted by Polaroid to buy increased quantities of Polacolor negative.

Another meeting was held in Rochester on September 11. Eilers went right to the heart of the matter. “To be blunt, do you intend to give us a license? If not, there is no point in going on.”

Werle said, “It is valuable to us to have you say in writing ‘we intend to give you a license’ because we think we have heard you say it, but we have never had it in writing, all we have had is a lot of gobblegook.”72 Land continued to resist, and it became apparent to all that a signature at that meeting was not going to be forthcoming.

“To put it simply,” he said, “the field [of one-step photography] is something we contributed to greatly and we feel we should share in it.”

Finally, at a meeting on October 4 in Rochester, Polaroid finally agreed to license Kodak to make Polacolor peel-apart film.73 In an apparent softening of its position, Kodak accepted.

Although Kodak was aware that the “license agreement [they received] was not really going to be meaningful” because it covered technology that was “rapidly going to be obsolete,” Petersen had convinced Eilers to let him pursue it “as a matter of pride.” Petersen was still frustrated because “the bait [of a license] had been held out … from time to time” as early as 1957 but had been withdrawn on each occasion.

…he assured Land that they would “end up with a better product if we take the time to do careful engineering at this time.”89 Land got it.

SX-70 & Aladdin

Land said, “You’re allowed one engineering failure and you’ve just had it.”90 They went to work.

Land told McCune’s deputy, Milton Dietz, that he would be transferring some of his engineers to the still secret project. He would not answer any questions about what project they were being moved to. When McCune returned, he convened a meeting of his engineering group and discovered for the first time that several key men were missing. When he learned about what Land had done, he was livid, both about the personnel move that had been made without any consultation and about responsibility for the camera design having been denied to his department.97 But from that day forward, the entirety of the camera design effort would be under Land’s total control.

Serious photographers vastly prefer this type of arrangement because of the advantages it provides in framing and focusing the picture. Basically, what you see (through the lens) is what you get (on the film). This was a feature suggested by Ansel Adams, and Land wanted to prove to his friend and Polaroid consultant that it could be done.

…to accommodate the wide range of focusing Land insisted on—ten inches to infinity—a viewfinder arrangement of “unusual accuracy” became necessary. Land told his engineers that he wanted to duplicate the effect obtained from a ground-glass viewfinder in a conventional SLR camera, where the image “comes magically out of the clouds. It doesn’t require explanation, and a child can do the adjustment.”

Wareham and his team tried several approaches but “failed miserably,” leading them to believe that the folding body design might have to be abandoned. Finally, Land told Wareham: “Forget it. Keep your heads down on the camera. I’ll invent the viewfinder.”

Some of the optical elements had to be manufactured to an accuracy of 20/1,000,000th of an inch. This effort pushed the design and manufacture of optical components to levels never before attempted on a mass-produced product.

The experience of working with Edwin Land … will rank right up with the best I ever expect to experience in my professional career. He expressed an uncompromising technical need, bordering on a kind of fantasy, in an enormously expensive and valuable development program. We were able to bring together a superb collection of diversely and incredibly skilled people who were able to support each other’s concepts with complementary skills, and we were given the chance to be successful. For most of us involved, that fine line between “impossible” and “very difficult” was moved a little bit. Dr. Land had an uncanny way of making an individual an expert by telling him that it was his job to be that expert, that important decisions would depend on the results of his work, and that the results were needed quickly. Yet the intensity of the work was balanced by good humor, by intervals of celebration, by time taken to contemplate technical and social consequences on all sides, and by the sense that the work was a shared responsibility.

Polaroid, led by the charismatic and enigmatic Land, had become the Apple Computer of the mid-twentieth century. It was arguably the most admired and glamorous technology company in the world. A loyal fan base of consumers and investors eagerly anticipated its new products.

Land had made the daring gamble of committing more than half a billion dollars of Polaroid laboratory research funds to the pursuit of his ultimate instant photography system. He did so without having done a single dollar’s worth of market research to determine whether people would actually buy the product. This leap of faith would later be characterized as “the biggest gamble ever made on a consumer product.”1 Articulating a philosophy that would later become the mantra of Apple’s Steve Jobs, Land proclaimed, “We don’t do market surveys. We create the markets with our products.”

“only a handful of companies in the world have been commercially successful at making even conventional color film. No less a company than DuPont tried and gave up.”5 Kodak had its doubts about Polaroid’s prospects as well. “As one in the business,” Louis Eilers had told Business Week, “it seems a prodigious task to me. They can hardly afford to hire all PhD’s to run their machines. I would predict quite a few headaches in startup of their production.”

Kodak had never allowed Polaroid’s scientists to see its negative-coating facility and had steadfastly kept its negative coating technology secret.

Many of his Polaroid executives argued that any public demonstration of Aladdin was premature. Despite many problems yet to be solved, Land, as was his nature, simply assumed that any remaining issues would be overcome by the hard work and determination of the supremely talented team of researchers he had assembled. His optimism was based on a decades-long track record of success in similar circumstances. And so, frustrating and even angering many around him, Land decided to go ahead and embark on a campaign to whet the photographic world’s appetite…

The supreme confidence underlying Land’s decision to move ahead had always been his singular attribute, and in many ways the real secret to all of his and Polaroid’s success.

…in the fall of 1972, Land determined that it was, indeed, “show time.” Literally. Land clearly reveled in the dramatic. “There’s no scientist I know who wouldn’t rather be a charlatan,” he once explained, “and when circumstances allow you to be both, why it’s great fun.”

When asked later about the camera he had flashed to the audience, Land disclosed that he called it Aladdin “because it has in it those things which Aladdin in his wildest and most intoxicated moments wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask his genie for.”21 What no one knew at the time, other than a few of his closest associates, was that the Aladdin in Land’s pocket was made of wood.22 Land’s stunt significantly heightened the growing curiosity surrounding Polaroid’s new system that, until then, had only been the subject of rumors.

It was imperative, of course, that the company continue to file for patents on the various innovations that were embodied in the new system, but anyone reading the patent literature might be able to learn too much about the new camera. Accordingly, Polaroid filed for patents on many key Aladdin components by suggesting they might be incorporated into other, unrelated camera bodies. This method, which was perfectly legal although clearly cryptic and evasive, made it harder to pierce the veil of secrecy that shrouded Aladdin.

…it “was only a matter of time before Goliath decided to compete with David.”28 Acknowledging that Polaroid had “a 3–5 year start,” the attitude at Kodak was that the time had come “to get serious … [by] ‘girding for battle.’”29 As a result, in early 1969 Kodak ramped up its previous efforts and launched a massive research program to develop its own instant photography products to compete with Polaroid’s.

“I am the last person in the world to undersell or underestimate Kodak,” Land acknowledged, but “we are so far out ahead in conceptualization and insight and understanding.” Land paused, then added, “[and] in patents,” as the audience broke into laughter, “that we can not only hold the lead, but move out well, well ahead of anyone else in the domain … [of instant photography].”

Reflecting his clear preference for the miracles of technological achievement over the mundane world of corporate finance, Land remarked to those around him, “I don’t want what you are about to see to be involved in this monetary domain.”

Land underscored the landmark nature of what they were about to see by telling the audience that he was there to finally fulfill his promise of introducing a new camera and film system that “revolutionizes the revolution” in photography he had begun in 1947 with his original instant photography system.48 “This day is one that will be a turning point in the history of photography. Photography will never be the same after today,” Land announced.49 “With the gargantuan effort of bringing [absolute one-step photography] into being, the company has come fully of age.”

Land focused on his oversized meerschaum pipe and pushed the shutter button five quick times in succession. About a second after each touch, a 3-in. by 3-in. blank plastic square shot out. Slowly and almost magically, like invisible ink being activated, they turned into color prints.

“Unlike the damp prints that emerge from present models, the new ones—which are made of plastic, not paper—feel completely dry, even during the remarkable, outside-the-camera developing process,” continued the impressed journalist.54 Land pointed out that the new film unit allowed the user to “spill martinis, drop it in the bathtub, put it in your pocket, stack it, give it away.”55 The absence of “garbage” from the film unit that needed to be discarded after use, as was the case with the current peel-apart system, was another notable major improvement.

When asked why the camera was not quite shirt-pocket-size, Land responded in good spirit, “It’s like a husband and wife forgiving the last 10 pounds because they love each other so.”

Land admitted that “my fantasy is that this camera will be as widely used as the telephone.”

Land did not allow the audience to photograph or handle the camera and photographs, or even to get too close.63 No measurements or specifications about the camera were released.64 Land was just following his basic equation: more secrecy created more mystery, and that, in turn, created more excitement. There was also the basic worry that a film unit might fall into the wrong hands, with Kodak presenting the biggest threat.

“Our camera is intellectually complicated and operationally simple. All you have to do to have the picture is to will it.”

All hell broke loose in labs and executive suites across Kodak’s Rochester headquarters when Land finally demonstrated Polaroid’s Aladdin camera and film system at that April 1972 shareholders meeting.

Following the Polaroid annual shareholders meeting, Sieg sent an even larger contingent, headed by Donald Delwiche, the supervisor of Kodak’s Systems Laboratories, to observe Land’s technical demonstration at the May 10 SPSE meeting in San Francisco.92 The entire event was tape-recorded and later transcribed as part of a highly detailed twenty-seven-page report, complete with diagrams of the meeting room and various aspects of the film and camera.

Fallon’s appointment signaled an apparent belief among board members that the challenges facing the company were centered not so much in marketing, where it continued to dominate its competitors, but in the area of research and development.

The Kodak Board had apparently concluded that the company needed a scientist, not a marketer, to lead it.

…despite cutbacks in many spending areas, Kodak’s research budget over the past five years had increased by fifty-nine percent to $188 million. Maybe not coincidentally, that period dated back to Land’s 1968 revelation to Kodak of Polaroid’s move toward a new system of one-step photography. No one missed the fact that Kodak was making a gigantic effort to enter the field.

…a full national commercial introduction of the Aladdin camera and film system was not going to be possible by Christmas. The newly built Polaroid manufacturing operation in Norwood was unable to turn out enough cameras in time. Land faced the expected barrage of second-guessers from some of his Polaroid executives—those who had previously argued the imprudence of prematurely announcing Aladdin. But, as usual, he plunged ahead nonetheless.

Competitive Shock

Some believed that Land had abandoned Aladdin because, despite the explanation involving the genie that he had provided at the 1971 shareholders meeting, he was concerned that people would dissect the name into “a la din.”118 “Din” was the nickname used for Land by his closest friends and colleagues.

…it decided to scrap the P-129 project to develop a color film that could be used in Polaroid’s existing peel-apart cameras. Up to this point, Kodak had already spent $94 million on this effort.

Kodak researchers and executives despaired in awe of Polaroid’s SX-70, noting that Polaroid had “set the standard and level of expectation for all future products of a similar type.”

An internal Kodak report acknowledged that despite whatever efforts Kodak could reasonably expect to muster, it was likely that the best it could expect to produce would be a “me too” system “no more than equal to” and “in some ways … less than equal to” Polaroid’s products.136 Kodak’s marketing executives were forced to admit the obvious: “We see no unique consumer benefits in the proposed Kodak program at this time.”

Kodak, feeling “hemmed in by Polaroid’s vast portfolio of patents,” had indeed “panicked.”142 In apparent desperation, a KPDC memo directed Kodak engineers to “not be constrained by what an individual feels is a potential patent infringement.”

Even though Polaroid experienced some bugs in the SX-70 as 1973 began, as Bill McCune later explained, the introduction continued because “we felt it was important to get the product on the market as rapidly as possible so that we would learn from the customer’s use of it and from the marketing aspects and customer service.”

…the costs for working out the persisting issues continued to build and unavoidably affected Polaroid’s bottom line.

…executives were forced to admit that the company’s earnings for the year would fall below previous estimates.3 The company’s stock fell more than ten percent the next day.4 By the end of the year, the stock had lost more than fifty percent of its value from the highs achieved during the initial introduction of SX-70.5 Some of this was attributable to a generally difficult economic climate that saw the stock market in decline across the board. But there was no doubt that the sheen on Polaroid in the Wall Street community, initially created by the dramatic launch of SX-70, was wearing off in light of the logistical problems it had met in bringing its revolutionary product to market.

Land refused to accept any culpability, suggesting instead that the analysts had created their own dilemma. “I agree that their disappointments come from exaggerated expectations. But they’re theirs.”6 In his view, the technical problems the company experienced in getting the new system to the marketplace were merely to be expected. “Anything we put out is new enough, different enough, daring enough, that you plan on a family of technical problems out in the market,” Land insisted.

…there was every indication that Polaroid had a successful product that consumers embraced despite its relatively high price. The 461,000 cameras produced in 1973 had been virtually all snapped up by an eager public by Christmas. It was clear that demand was exceeding supply.

Land had little interest in such a system, preferring the elegance of the leather-encased, fully automated folding SX-70 camera made of metal, not plastic.14 Although some development work was conducted at Polaroid toward a more economical model, Land did not consider it a priority at this juncture.

…the reality was that Polaroid had never gone head to head against Kodak, or any other competitor for that matter. The marketplace would be the ultimate field of battle, and the place where Polaroid’s products would have to prove their superiority.

Kodak had begun a campaign to challenge certain Polaroid patents in foreign countries where either the local patent system allowed for third parties to dispute an application while it was still under consideration or where the patent process worked faster than in the U.S. and thus patents had already issued and could be attacked by seeking revocation. As these Polaroid executives saw it, there was every chance that the particular patents and applications Kodak chose to target abroad provided clues about the instant system it was intending to release. At the very least, Kodak’s foreign patent activities suggested it still believed that certain Polaroid patents stood in its way.

The great irony in Kodak’s position was that it had essentially followed the same patent strategy with regard to its own research and development efforts. As one student of patent law and history has pointed out, “More than sixty years before Edwin Land applied for his first patent, George Eastman applied in the United States and Europe for patents on his own pathbreaking photographic inventions, ultimately erecting an intellectual property fortress as impregnable in its domain as was Polaroid’s.”

Fish was perhaps best known for having prosecuted the famous “wing-warping” patent infringement case on behalf of the Wright brothers against archrival Glenn Curtiss and his company.

…if Polaroid were going to bring a lawsuit against Kodak for patent infringement, it would be to its great advantage if it could have control over the timing and locale of the action. Litigating the matter in a Boston courtroom, as opposed to one in Kodak’s hometown of Rochester, would be a major benefit to Polaroid, giving it the legal equivalent of a “home court” advantage.

But waiting to sue Kodak until its products actually hit the market, a necessity if it was to sue for infringement, also posed a threat to Polaroid’s ability to try the case in Boston.

Kodak would be entering the instant photography market with a product based on a new chemistry it had developed and gave them a copy of a French patent on that chemistry issued to a Kodak chemist, Lee Fleckenstein.63 Kodak believed that it had successfully avoided infringing any of Polaroid’s patents.64 Fallon maintained that there was nothing that Polaroid could do to stop this move. Although Fallon did not request a license under any specific Polaroid patents, he said that he was interested in exploring whether or not Polaroid had reconsidered its position on licensing Kodak under its integral instant photography patents.

McCune asked Fallon to identify the patents Kodak had in mind but received no response.66 In effect, Kodak wanted a ticket into the instant photography market for something close to free. While Kodak might be willing to pay to avoid litigation, it was also clear that the amount was a nuisance value, as opposed to the significant sums that would be generated by a license under Polaroid patents, should Polaroid be willing to grant one.67 It was a truly audacious posture that Kodak was taking. As one chronicler of Kodak’s history has observed, “the company’s success [through the 1960s and early 1970s] fueled an arrogance that, in hindsight, is truly remarkable.”

…the Polaroid lawyers who knew him best confided that they had some doubt as to whether Land would ever play any active role in any aspect of the legal battle. Would he ever be willing to surrender his precious privacy to participate in the public arena of a lawsuit? Up to this point, he hadn’t even seen fit to meet Polaroid’s trial counsel. Could he be relied on to become a witness on behalf of his company and subject himself to examination in pretrial depositions or in a courtroom?

“there are no carbon copies of Land. He combines the prophet and the promoter, the egghead and the executive, in a way that is unique.”78 Land himself could hardly contemplate the notion that a worthy successor might even exist. Once asked by a journalist “what qualities his successor should have,” Land provided “a description of such a paragon of talent, intelligence, and virtue that even he paused, laughed, and said, ‘We’re making him down in the laboratory.’”

A feeling was developing that the company had simply grown too big to be managed by one person with the kind of almost dictatorial control that Land exercised. Although Polaroid had many talented and able people in its executive ranks, Land had always made all key decisions.

Land, apparently, got the message. On January 22, 1975, it was announced that Land had nominated his longtime comrade, Bill McCune, to the position of president and chief operating officer.

McCune’s selection was a big surprise inside and outside Polaroid. To many, the obvious choice for the top job was Wyman, whom many thought had been in line to assume the Polaroid presidency.85 But there had been a tug-of-war between the marketing and the technical contingents within Polaroid’s executive ranks. McCune told Land that Wyman lacked the technical background to lead the company and suffered from a poor rapport with many key executives.

…greatly influenced by Land, the scientific division won out when the Polaroid board of directors finally acted. It was not a coincidence that upon McCune’s appointment, it was simultaneously announced by the Green Giant Company of Le Sueur, Minnesota, that Wyman was leaving Polaroid to assume the job as its chief executive.

Although Land had resisted this move, and had been forced begrudgingly to relinquish some control over running the company he had created, he took comfort from the fact that it was one of his protégés that had succeeded him as only the second president in Polaroid history. “The fact that Mr. McCune and I have been working together almost since the beginning of Polaroid Corp. means that the individual character of this innovative company will be reinforced,” Land acknowledged.

When Land wants you to do something, he makes you feel like you’re the greatest thing since ice cream. You walk away knowing that if you fail you’ll let him down personally and the whole company as well. Only, half the time, you walk away not quite sure just what it is Land wants you to do. McCune’s orders are normally clear, but if they aren’t I can say, “Bill, what are you trying to tell me?” “Exactly what do you want me to do?” I would never dare ask Land that.

Patent Wars

On March 19, 1975, Kodak released its 1974 annual report in which it disclosed that it had finally “completed the design of its own instant cameras, [had] … made final the format and characteristics of a litter-free film for instant prints,” and had begun a “major building program” to manufacture them.

The very next day, Berkey Photo invited a small group of industry analysts to its New York offices to announce that it intended to introduce later that year a relatively low-priced camera, to be called the Wizard, that would use Polaroid’s SX-70 film.

In October 1972, Berkey had released, without prior arrangement with Polaroid, a camera that used three types of Polaroid color and black-and-white peel-apart film already on the market. At that time, no legal action was taken immediately against Berkey, essentially because peel-apart technology was already destined for obsolescence.

The Berkey contingent apparently believed that the same scenario would play out if it introduced a camera using Polaroid’s integral SX-70 film. Such was not to be the case.

Despite the relatively benign threat the Berkey introduction posed to Polaroid from a business perspective, Polaroid would have to act aggressively if it turned out that the Berkey cameras indeed infringed Polaroid patents. This was especially true if the patents turned out to be the same as those that would have to be asserted later against Kodak when it entered the market. To not sue Berkey, thereby giving it preferential treatment, would subject Polaroid to potential legal complications in the main event that was sure to come, the case against Kodak.

Schwartz was informed that Polaroid had previously conceded a foreign patent application challenge known as an “interference” when it appeared that it would be necessary for Land to participate actively if Polaroid wanted to prevail.113 Rather than go through the trouble of asking Land to appear, Polaroid actually gave up the case.

On July 3, 1975, even though Berkey had yet to release its Wizard camera to the public, Polaroid filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging infringement and threatened infringement of ten patents and asking the court to enjoin Berkey from manufacturing or selling its cameras within the United States.

…the first shot in the overt patent war over instant photography had been fired, if not at the real enemy, then at a stand-in. This would warn Kodak, and the rest of the photography industry, that Polaroid was ready, willing, and determined to defend its patent positions.

Some analysts had already concluded that, based on what they had seen and heard, Kodak’s “instant photo system may well be technically superior to Polaroid’s.”

“I carry Polaroid only because I have to,” snapped one dealer in what was termed by the Wall Street Journal “a typical comment.”

Even Polaroid’s biggest supporters had to acknowledge that despite the possibility that Kodak’s entry into the field might expand the instant photography market overall, the larger company would likely capture fifty to sixty percent of that market, severely impeding Polaroid’s ability to grow and to reap the rewards of the technology it had pioneered.

…unlike the Berkey situation in which a sample of the camera had actually been delivered in advance to Polaroid, no one on the Polaroid side had actually seen the Kodak camera or film. Kodak had trumpeted the fact that its products were going to be the result of a massive research program that resulted in the development of, among other things, “new chemistry and emulsion technology.”22 It had assured analysts that “there will not be a patent infringement.”23 Even though this view was not shared by Polaroid or its counsel, who knew just how well Polaroid’s patent portfolio covered the instant photography terrain, there was still insufficient hard evidence on which Polaroid could base a claim of threatened infringement.

These tidbits only further fed the rampant curiosity. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “because so little is known about Kodak’s newest product, analysts were putting their rulers to that reproduction with all the zeal of private eyes.”24 Despite the lack of detail, the story spread fast and hit hard.

Up to that point, Land had spurned requests from Polaroid executives who wanted to “use [him] as a weapon” in the public relations “war with Kodak.”34 Land preferred, instead, to maintain his privacy.

Present were Land and McCune, together with key members of the Polaroid legal team, including Kerr and Schwartz, who had earlier lunched with the company’s Management Executive Committee.52 In fact, this was the first time that either of the Fish & Neave lawyers had ever met Land, despite the fact that they had been working toward this day for more than two years and had already filed a patent infringement action on behalf of Polaroid against Berkey Photo.

When the Kodak camera and film arrived, Land quickly took some pictures, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was clear immediately that the Kodak system was no big deal, considering the buildup and what one might have expected a company like Kodak to come up with.53 “Well, we expected more of Kodak,” Land said immediately.54 This was not the innovative system that many had predicted—and many at Polaroid had feared. While it was yet to be determined what legal action could be taken to protect the company’s turf, at least everyone in the room knew at that moment that they would be competing in the marketplace with a Kodak system that was roughly comparable to Polaroid’s, and likely inferior.

Tom Owen of Playboy commented that the Kodak “camera looks old-fashioned and klutzy.”59 An official from the New York Stock Exchange declared: “Polaroid has a superior product. I was not impressed with Kodak’s picture quality.”60 Other journalists recognized at least some kind of similarity to Polaroid’s products. “Kodak’s cameras are probably a rip off,” said one.

Noting that Kodak had not introduced “any startling technological innovations,” the Wall Street Journal reported: “the lack of any technical breakthroughs seemed to disappoint stock market traders.”

Within twenty-four hours the same commentators realized that, although Kodak had not delivered on its potential or its promise to introduce a radically improved instant picture system, its entry into the market as a direct competitor was still likely to be a serious problem for Polaroid.

…these will sell because “Kodak’s doing it.”65 Suddenly, several longtime Polaroid boosters changed their positions and starting recommending the sale of Polaroid stock, citing the inevitable decline in market share that Polaroid would suffer, whatever the comparison with the Kodak system.

Land’s initial sigh of relief about Kodak’s system also quickly turned into something else. After studying Kodak’s products, he became surprised and outraged by what he saw. A senior Polaroid executive, who was present while Land examined the newly introduced Kodak cameras and film, noted that he was “astonished” at the similarities to Polaroid’s system, having “expected to see something new and unusual” from Kodak.68 This took seven years to develop? On a technical level Land was underwhelmed by what Kodak had produced, but on an emotional level he quickly became enraged and agitated as he realized that the company that had once been his mentor and his biggest supporter had essentially ripped off his company’s technology to compete with Polaroid in the field it had created.

Given Kodak’s enormous marketing power, and its virtual stranglehold over the conventional photography industry, Land knew that the very survival of Polaroid, a company almost completely dependent on the “ardent cultivation” of its instant photography business, was in jeopardy.

Kerr and Schwartz had been directed to have a patent infringement suit filed against Kodak before the Polaroid annual shareholders meeting scheduled for April 27. That gave them exactly six days to complete their study of the Polaroid patent portfolio and to choose the patents to be asserted. While they had a good head start on the process, it was a monumental undertaking.

The rush to the Boston federal courthouse was clearly partly emotional, but there were strategic reasons to move quickly as well. Kerr and Schwartz knew that Polaroid would have a substantial advantage if the legal battle could be fought on its home turf. They wanted to avoid at all cost having to try a lawsuit in a Rochester venue. Given the circumstances, if Kodak suspected that Polaroid was going to sue for infringement, it could take the preemptive move of filing an action in its home court seeking a declaratory judgment that its products were free of violating any of Polaroid’s patents. Why Kodak did not make this proactive move is open to conjecture. It’s possible that its executives and its attorneys were simply unsure about how Polaroid might react.

Kodak’s patent attorneys had so advised Kodak’s management after having studied Polaroid’s patents for six or seven years.75 In fact, Kodak’s litigation counsel was convinced that Polaroid would not sue and ultimately lost a bet to its director of research on that score.

Kodak might have still believed that the publicity-shy Land would never participate in a lawsuit and never agree to appear at a trial.

The lawyers were being hypercautious; they had to be sure that any patent asserted would be substantial enough to withstand the all-out attack Kodak would be sure to bring against it.

Because of the extensive studies done of the Polaroid portfolio leading up to the Berkey suit, Schwartz had a solid list of camera patents to work with. Once these patents were compared with the Kodak cameras, they quickly determined that three of the patents asserted against Berkey would also be good candidates for the Kodak case.

At 4:59 p.m. on April 26, 1976, six days after the commercial introduction of Kodak’s instant camera and film products, and the day before both Polaroid’s and Kodak’s annual shareholders meetings, a complaint detailing Polaroid’s action for patent infringement against Eastman Kodak was hand-delivered to Boston’s U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.84 The lawsuit was officially commenced when the court clerk stamped Polaroid’s papers at 5:07 p.m.

Reprising his role as the champion of patents, this time in a real-life instead of an academic context, Land proclaimed, “The only thing that is keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only way to protect our brilliance is patents… . This is our very soul we’re involved in … our whole life. For them it’s just another field.”

“To the rest of the photographic industry, instant photography is a thing apart. To Polaroid, it is the whole of life.”88 Angrily, he declared to a cheering audience: “We intend to stay in our own lot and protect that lot.”

Perhaps more significantly, this was becoming Land’s personal crusade, with his entire life’s work and the very survival of the company he had founded and built at stake. “This was his final effort,” a colleague remarked, “the defense of everything he believed in: the patent system, his patents, all the inventions he had made.”

For eight years leading up to its product launch, Kodak had conducted a comprehensive study of Polaroid’s patents and had collected a series of legal opinions stating that the key patents standing in the way of Kodak’s entry to the field were flawed.4 The study included a review of between 200 and 250 Polaroid patents and had resulted in written opinions that sixty-seven key Polaroid patents were either invalid or, if valid, would not be infringed by Kodak’s proposed instant photography system.5 Kodak’s longtime outside patent counsel, the New York City law firm of Kenyon & Kenyon Reilly Carr & Chapin, issued these opinions.

Kerr and Schwartz didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have one more Land patent in their portfolio for trial. They were beginning to believe that Land would not only play a major role in the proceedings but would also be a highly effective advocate, particularly when his personal patents were under attack—so it was worth taking a chance on the Symmetrical Supports patent. If anyone could explain and defend the invention covered in that patent, it would be Land.

Like Kodak, IBM had decided that it would accomplish this by putting out its own products, knowing it would get sued. Its plan was to then beat Xerox’s patent portfolio through infringement litigation and thus open the field for its products. So, IBM had developed its own machines and put them on the market in April 1970. Xerox, like Polaroid, had immediately sued for patent infringement to protect its turf.

The Xerox v. IBM lawsuit was still pending in 1976 when Polaroid sued Kodak, so it was still unclear what impact IBM’s patent misuse strategy would actually have in that litigation.

The FTC had eventually settled that complaint in November 1974 with an order forcing Xerox to make its 1,700 patents available to any company that wanted them.44 Polaroid could not even imagine suffering a similar result—being forced to license its patents broadly.

Fish & Neave was representing IBM in its patent battle against Xerox, and it was none other than Herb Schwartz who, as part of the team on the case, had devised and run IBM’s successful patent misuse strategy. He had even been responsible for the “white paper” detailing Xerox’s patent misuse that was handed over to the U.S. Justice Department—and that had led to the FTC investigation.45 Thus, in effect having been on the other side of this argument, Schwartz was fully aware of the ins and outs of what Kodak was attempting to do. More importantly, he fully appreciated the distinctions between Polaroid’s patent practices and the patent conduct of Xerox that had made it vulnerable to misuse charges.

…those rights had not been acquired as a result of research and development work done at Xerox but, rather, through this aggressive barter patent-licensing policy and outright purchase. Schwartz himself had developed these facts through an ambitious program of deposing executives from scores of companies that Xerox had abused in this fashion. He had also deposed Sol Linowitz, the CEO of Xerox, who had been the architect of its strategy.46 It was a very different situation at Polaroid, where the entire field of instant photography had been invented and developed over decades through its own hard work and scientific initiative. Polaroid had not acquired any of its patents from others. This was a major distinction in Schwartz’s view.

Litigation Grind

As one Wall Street observer reported to its subscribers, “we doubt that Kodak would have entered the instant market, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to do so, if it had not been reasonably confident that it could win any patent infringement cases or at least settle them at reasonable cost.”

Carr’s strategy was, by haggling over everything, to delay the proceedings as much as possible, putting off the actual trial for as long as he could, maybe forever. Kodak counsel intended to make the discovery process as excruciatingly slow, aggravating, and ultimately expensive for their opponent as possible. In this, they were indeed successful.

The year began with the induction of Edwin Land into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The U.S. Patent Office had established this institution in 1973 and had made Thomas Edison its first inductee. Land was joining an august and highly selective group that included the most important inventors in history…

He was the first inductee ever admitted during his lifetime.

Ironically, that 1977 class of five inductees also included George Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, who was honored for his contributions to photography.

Now that Polaroid had overcome Land’s reluctance to produce cameras aimed at the low-price end of the market considered Kodak’s marketing sweet spot, Polaroid was doing better than expected in the head-to-head competition. Its bottom line had also improved without the drain on its resources incurred during the problems encountered in the introduction of the SX-70 system.

Polaroid had moved to dismiss or to stay most of these, but there was no word from the Boston federal courthouse on any of it. The court was simply sitting on a huge pile of paper. In early July, with no prior warning, the parties learned that Judge Murray had resigned from the case. According to Polaroid’s local counsel, William Cheeseman, Judge Murray had elected to take senior status.84 The judge indicated that the federal court backlog of cases in Boston was “hopeless” and that he personally had a docket of 1,000 matters. This move would allow him to elect the cases he actually wanted to deal with. Clearly, he had elected not to deal with Polaroid v. Kodak, which would now have to be reassigned to a new judge.

…on Saturday, January 21, Judge Marvin Frankel announced that it had found for Berkey. Among other things, the jury ruled that by not giving advance notice of the new system to its competitors, Kodak had unlawfully used its influence and control to monopolize the market.

On March 22, the Kodak jury returned with an award of $112.8 million in damages for Berkey, an amount that was later adjusted by the judge to $87 million.17 One week later, Berkey signed off on a settlement agreement in the Polaroid case that was a clear victory for Polaroid.

Berkey paid no damages for its admitted infringement, but Polaroid’s victory was manifest. It had vanquished the first company that had dared to challenge its legal patent monopoly in instant photography, with its patent portfolio intact.

Polaroid’s low-cost OneStep was outselling Kodak’s Handle model by a ratio of two-to-one, mostly because Polaroid’s camera was motorized while Kodak’s required using a hand crank.43 Polaroid was selling more cameras now than it had been before Kodak introduced its competing products.

With the litigation now more than two years old, it was surprising that the two opposing senior partners remained involved in the minutiae of the battle.

Kerr had enough. On December 14, he wrote to Carr in response to his latest missive: “I’m tired of letters of this ilk, and I am confident that you are also… . Can we do something to turn off these faucets?”14 The fact that senior partners in two of America’s most prominent law firms were involved in writing this kind of exchange speaks volumes about the landmark importance of the case and shows how vigorously it was contested at every level.

…the four lawyers charged with conducting the lawsuit for Polaroid had neither seen nor heard from Land in more than two years—since before the lawsuit had even been brought—and really had no definitive word and little feeling for how Land might react when his number was finally called. Would he resist, unwilling to surrender his privacy, and make the process difficult, or would he join the effort and take his seemingly rightful position at the head of Polaroid’s effort? No one really knew for sure.

Bob Peck even asked Schwartz to look at the legal consequences should Land refuse to appear at his deposition.

…in early 1979, nearly three years into litigation, the teams handling the case had grown into small armies. This massive effort was generating huge legal bills for Polaroid. Unused to litigation and costs on this scale, Polaroid’s Peck and Mikulka were growing a bit uncomfortable with the financial hemorrhaging. It was greater than ever expected, even though they knew Polaroid had to stay the course. When, fortuitously, an unrelated story about large-scale litigation appeared in the New York Times on March 16, 1979, the day of a status conference with Peck and Mikulka, Kerr handed a copy to Bob Peck.30 Kerr and Schwartz cited its highly relevant point: it was during discovery, and in particular the deposition stage, “that most trials are won or lost.” The piece went on to note: “it is also at this stage that a corporation incurs some of the heaviest legal expenses.”31 To their litigator’s relief, this article gave Polaroid executives some comfort in knowing that what they were experiencing was not unusual, and it eased whatever strains may have been developing between client and counsel.

Almost three years into it, perhaps the most astonishing thing about the Polaroid v. Kodak case was that Edwin Land, the unquestioned father of instant photography and the key figure in one of the most momentous lawsuits of the century, was missing in action from the frontlines of the battle.

At this meeting, Land made it clear for the first time that he was willing and, in fact, anxious to participate fully in the case. To him this meant that, consistent with his nature of tackling problems head-on and with complete immersion, he was going to prepare himself for the endeavor in a most comprehensive way.

…the meeting also witnessed the first signs of a clash of personalities between Land and Kerr. These were two men of enormous egos. One would not characterize Land as humble; he could come off as arrogant and he certainly did not suffer fools gladly. Kerr, unlike those who worked with and for Land, was not intimidated by Land’s brilliance or his often imperious ways. As a former Marine and FBI agent, and someone who had seen his share of the rough and tumble, no one intimidated Kerr; he considered himself equal to Land and was unwilling to show the deference that Land was accustomed to.5 For his part, Land didn’t like people who challenged his control over situations, and he saw Kerr as definitely in that category.6 Despite Kerr’s standing as a prominent attorney, Land saw him as being stiff and full of his own importance.

One of Land’s colleagues loved to tell the story of the time Land called him one morning to complain that no one had shown up for work in his laboratory to continue the experiments they were engaged in.9 The colleague had to remind Land that it was Thanksgiving Day. What his family made of this is not known.

When it came to light that the Rowland Foundation, a not-for-profit entity controlled by Land, had sold 300,000 shares of Polaroid stock in early January at $52.50, just weeks before the unsatisfactory numbers were announced, the financial community, and some Polaroid shareholders, cried foul.

Chief Judge Irving Kaufman of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the legendary Truman appointee who presided over the Rosenberg spy trial during the early 1950s, issued a 121-page opinion upending that decision, reversing almost the entire $81.4 million damages award and ordering a new trial. Citing numerous errors by the trial judge in his interpretation of the law, the Second Circuit ruled, in what became known as a seminal antitrust opinion, that a company does not violate the Sherman Antitrust Act by “simply … reaping the competitive rewards attributable to its size.”1 In language that must have resonated at Polaroid, as it burst a bubble at Berkey, Kaufman held that the antitrust laws had been misapplied in the case and that “the mere possession of monopoly power” was not necessarily illegal.

After the Supreme Court declined to consider Berkey’s petition for review of the Second Circuit’s decision, the case was eventually settled for $6.8 million and was never retried.

This explanation was one of the many translations of abstruse technical data into plain English prepared by the Polaroid legal team. In many ways, this is the art of the patent litigator, and it was essential for Kerr to give Land a glimpse of the style and level of discussion and analysis he would be facing. There was no time that day to explore fully even that one patent. But Land now had a better idea of what would be expected of him as a witness, first in deposition and later at trial, if he was going to be an asset in making Polaroid’s case.

Fallon was riding high on his company’s success. During his tenure, Kodak’s sales increased from $3.48 billion to $10.8 billion, and its worldwide work force grew from 114,800 to 136,500. It had posted its highest levels of sales and profits in the company’s ninety-nine-year history, a performance, according to Forbes, that made it “likely that Kodak will become the tenth industrial company in American business history to earn $1 billion after taxes this year.”

Kodak was eventually forced to abandon all of its attempts to patent the film unit for itself.18 But it was caught in the inconsistency of having taken the position that the structure was patentable over the very same prior art it now contended invalidated the invention. In one final blow, Polaroid went on to allege that once Kodak learned of the pending Rogers applications, it had made two ex parte contacts with the patent examiners handling them in the U.S. Patent Office, urging that they be rejected.

…he would indeed receive “advance notice of the materials I would like Dr. Land to review.” Carr also added, “There may not be a great number of patents and publications required for the first session.”21 Nothing else was heard from Carr for three weeks. Then, on September 12, less than two weeks before the first session with Land was scheduled, Kerr received a letter from Carr listing seventeen prior art references with which “we desire Dr. Land to familiarize himself prior to his deposition.”22 Kerr was not amused, nor would his clients be.

By this point, Carr must have finally realized that he was up against a fully engaged and formidable adversary. Carr had long believed that Land’s later patents, like those in suit, were merely restatements of his earlier work.26 Now, for the first time, Carr and his client were having the distinctions between the generations of Polaroid patents explained to them in a way they had perhaps not been able to appreciate. With each successive answer it was becoming more apparent that Land was going to be a force throughout the rest of this legal battle. Schwartz and Kerr knew, once and for all, that he was going to be their star witness if the case ever reached trial.

Carr’s underestimation of Land might also have been influenced by the contingent at Kodak, including Fallon, who frankly had come to dislike Polaroid’s founder and had taken to minimizing his achievements.28 This attitude was reflected in Carr’s questions, early in the deposition process, about things that went beyond the usual biographical details. He made reference—for no apparent reason relevant to the litigation—to the fact that Land had dropped out of school and had never received a degree.

“I have always been accustomed to calling you Dr. Land,” Carr told the witness. “Is it all right if I do that?” inquired Carr, as Quillen and his colleagues restrained their smirks. “Yes, Mr. Carr,” Land replied. “That is a courtesy my friends show me.”29 Land, the Kodak contingent thought, didn’t fully appreciate the deprecation and sarcasm behind the question.30 They were probably right.

Land and his company continued to be embarrassed and distracted by Polavision’s negative reception.

Polavision “became a personal thing,” McCune observed. Land was devoting great time and energy, spending hours in research, in an effort to rescue Polaroid’s motion picture technology.

When one analyst insisted on asking Land about “the bottom line” for his new product, Land issued one of his most famous retorts, and one that has found its way into Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: “The bottom line?” Land replied. “The bottom line is in heaven.”

“For all his restless inventiveness, Land has always been financially conservative,” it was noted in a major feature piece in Financial World. “Polaroid has never had a penny of long term debt,” it pointed out, and predicted that its current problems would not cause it to “deviate a bit from that very conservative course.”

The press noted that by this point Land’s ownership of the company had been reduced to fourteen percent, and so speculation began as to whether Polaroid was in danger of being taken over.40 The takeover, of course, never occurred. The financial hit from Polavision proved, as analysts predicted, to be a onetime glitch in an otherwise consistently positive performance for the company throughout this era. But the rumblings within Polaroid’s management about just what role, if any, was still appropriate for the company’s aging patriarch had clearly begun and would continue over the next year.

This was vintage Land. When he heard about the change of venue, he sent his assistant to survey the battlefield, without advising counsel running the case. But Kerr needed to rein him in, and so he undid all of the arrangements that Land had sought to make. This was an exercise of authority that Land was not accustomed to. It was yet another skirmish in the growing battle of egos between these two men. In fact, the tension was growing in any number of ways. For example, during the deposition sessions in Boston, Land had insisted that his entire entourage travel in a Polaroid company van. Kerr was apparently appalled that they were not using a limousine or at least a town car, but that was just not Land’s style.44 Kerr suffered silently the indignity of riding in a van, at least in public, but privately his resentment in having to bow to Land’s preference on this mode of transportation was apparent to his colleagues.

Land proved to be a voracious study, perhaps not unexpectedly. The upshot of this was that he was prepared for every trap that Carr attempted to lay for him and was able to turn the remainder of his deposition into an intellectual, highly technical debate and exchange that frustrated Carr time and time again.

“The Polaroid-Kodak suit is three and a half years old. No one seems to know whether it will go to trial or to kindergarten next year.”

At this point, Kerr, who was approaching retirement, began to distance himself from the process, leaving Schwartz, who had largely set the original strategy, to fight this battle of attrition.

Schwartz called Kodak’s bluff when it attempted to hinder the production of detailed laboratory notebooks relating to its research and development activities by making the task too onerous.

…the Polaroid lawyer was told Kodak was producing a collection of 2,300 notebooks but that he was only being shown two rolling bookcases containing a small portion of them. Kodak obviously intended to bog down the review so that Polaroid’s lawyer would give up the search. When the young lawyer suggested that he survey the entire collection first so as to select a relatively small number that he would review in detail thereafter, Kodak abruptly terminated the search and sent the lawyer packing.3 Schwartz concluded that Kodak shut the process down in order to buy time to rethink its position. But Kodak’s counsel had agreed to produce this material. Accordingly, after the usual niggling back and forth, the inspection was recommenced two weeks later and, ultimately, resulted in a demand that Kodak produce selected pages from 225 of the 2,300 notebooks.4 Among those pages were some of the most important documents that Polaroid was to secure from Kodak throughout the discovery phase leading to trial.

…to everyone’s surprise, in early December, all counsel were notified by Judge Nelson’s law clerk about “certain facts that raise a question concerning the advisability or necessity of [Judge Nelson’s] recusal” in the case.8 Land had made a contribution of $2,500 some ten years earlier to Judge Nelson’s campaign for Congress.

1979 had been a very difficult one, arguably the worst in its forty-two-year history. The company saw its earnings plummet seventy percent, from $118 million in 1978 to a mere $36 million in 1979. Its stock, always on a bit of a roller-coaster ride, lost more than half its value…

Trial & Testimony

…the recession the country was experiencing created a very difficult environment for a luxury or recreational industry like instant photography. Although the OneStep remained the best-selling camera in America for the third year in a row, the overall impact of the nation’s doldrums cost Polaroid sales growth that might have improved its fiscal condition.

Polaroid made the announcement on March 6, 1980. Effective with the shareholders meeting on April 22, Land would step down as the company’s chief executive officer, turning that additional title over to William McCune, the man who had already succeeded him as president and chief operating officer five years earlier.

This was a difficult move for Land. He did not agree to this transition voluntarily, and the view of those close to him at the time was that he was pushed out.

Land briefly sought independent legal advice to see if he could fight off the forces arrayed against him, but quickly capitulated.35 In the end, he likely realized that this development was inevitable. His work would continue in the private research facility, known as the Rowland Institute, that he was establishing on the bank of the Charles River in Cambridge, just down the road from Polaroid’s headquarters and the campus of MIT.

…why did Kodak keep up these exhaustive (and exhausting) examinations of Land and other key Polaroid witnesses?

…a good trial lawyer should never waste his or her good stuff in depositions, unless you thought that by doing so you could blow your opponent’s case out of the water. The better strategy was to save it for trial, he believed.46 In contrast, Carr’s approach revealed most, if not all, of Kodak’s best arguments to Polaroid’s attorneys, who were then able to analyze them and prepare a response.

Carr’s approach resulted in helping Polaroid’s key witnesses prepare for giving testimony at trial and, in particular, for their inevitable cross-examination by Carr.47 Polaroid’s most important witnesses were forced during depositions to learn every aspect of the technical and legal case that Kodak was asserting, ensuring that there would be no surprises if and when they took the witness stand. Carr was also acclimating them to the otherwise uncomfortable experience of being a witness. By spending such long periods in deposition engaged in detailed interrogation—Rogers was deposed for twenty-one days and Land for twelve days—there was every chance that at trial the witnesses would be neither uncomfortable nor unprepared.

As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in a dissent at the time, “the only patent that is valid is one which this Court has not been able to get its hands on.”

…a patent’s survivability rate increased over the years from that nadir.55 Yet, it was only around thirty-five percent during the 1970s.

Land’s perspective was quite different. He clearly did not look at the case solely from a business point of view. Ultimately, this was a personal battle for him. On a visceral level, Land could not help but react emotionally to the basic thrust of Kodak’s “invalidity” defense, which, in essence, asserted that the so-called inventions disclosed in the Polaroid patents were not worthy of protection because they either had been previously discovered or, more insultingly, were so trivial that they would have been obvious to any reasonable person skilled in the art of instant photography.

…document after document was put in front of Fallon, many of which it appeared he had never seen before. Time after time, Fallon’s dismay was evident when Schwartz pointed out a particularly damaging passage. His was not a poker player’s face or demeanor, at least on this occasion. There was virtually no meaningful substantive information that Fallon was able to provide in response to Schwartz’s questions, but that was not the purpose of the exercise. The education of Kodak’s CEO having been emphatically delivered, the deposition was adjourned and Schwartz returned to New York to await its impact. Not unexpectedly, nothing seemed to come of it.

Judge Zobel reacted immediately. Instead of taking the matter under advisement to issue a decision at a later date, she set a schedule for the case right then, something she had obviously decided to do before coming into the courtroom.

For the first time, a judge had taken full control of a messy and seemingly endless pretrial process. Zobel was clearly not intimidated by the enormity or the gravity of the case and seemed determined to actually try it.

Following Zobel’s action, there was suddenly a certain irritable tone that seemed to appear in Carr’s daily correspondence. Carr reverted to complaining about the depositions Schwartz had been reluctant to schedule before the conference with Judge Zobel.68 Carr was not happy about the firm deadlines set by the judge.

Polaroid lawyers refused to engage in legal civilities like granting what would otherwise be considered routine extensions and hammered away at the main point: Kodak had done everything it could to avoid what it was supposed to do.

Land’s central message was to make it “clear that he does not intend to allow anyone at Polaroid to devote too much of its resources to diversification,”

Land wanted to make sure that they did not lose sight of what he believed to be the company’s primary mission, to make instant photography the photographic system of the masses.

I honestly believe that the basic amateur field is in its infancy and not its maturity,”

Whatever factors went into Kodak’s intransigence, it apparently was in denial about the reality that it needed to win on each and every patent in order to prevail. Winning on some but losing on others was not going to result in a positive outcome for the company. Negotiating some kind of royalty with Polaroid would have legitimized Kodak’s presence in the instant photography field and allowed it to compete fully for market share without any fear of throwing additional resources into an area of its business plagued by legal uncertainty.

Kodak also failed to appreciate the public relations impact. To some extent, the decision to enter the instant photography field had already damaged Kodak’s relationship with its industrial customers in the conventional photofinishing business, none of whom were exactly enthusiastic about a technology that severely impacted their revenues.49 But what about Kodak’s image generally? Given its status as the preeminent photography company in the world, how would it look if a court adjudged it to have ripped off the intellectual property of one of its customers and competitors? And although it was a long shot in Kodak’s view, what if it lost and was forced to abandon the business altogether? All in all, these were indeed huge risks, and it would seem that at least exploring a negotiated settlement would have been the prudent thing to do.

By moving ahead, what Kodak was certain to get was an Edwin Land committed to fighting and to winning.

Most notable was a dispute concerning the strike of Boston school bus drivers the previous year, which she grappled with by sending several drivers to jail for contempt of court while declaring that the strike “was akin to anarchy and [it] cannot and will not be tolerated.”7 Both sides had learned to not test her patience.

Land never lost sight of the fact that Judge Zobel was his audience, and each time she interrupted to ask for some clarification, he patiently reviewed the material until she was satisfied that she understood his testimony. Whenever the judge showed initiative to learn more than might have been intended for his direct testimony, Land obliged.

The judge asked, “How does the print coater work? How does the print coater perform the stabilizing function? Or doesn’t it matter?” Land pounced on his student’s curiosity…

Minutes later, when Judge Zobel asked another question concerning the operation of his invention, Land complimented her: “I think you have a shrewd insight and I’ll have to give an intuitive answer.”48 Clearly, a productive teacher and pupil relationship was forming between the two of them. Polaroid’s lawyers were delighted as they observed Land performing effectively in a role he relished, with Judge Zobel handling her “intense education … from Dr. Land … with great tact and fine humor.”

…each and every prior art reference was flawed in some way, and none disclosed his invention or rendered it obvious. Some of the patents cited by Kodak were actually in his name. One covered what Land admitted was “the heart of the structure” for what became the SX-70 film unit, but Land explained how this earlier patent did not address the problem of achieving a flat film unit, and “did not describe or recognize any special benefits or advantages which would accrue from the use of film supports having the characteristics specified in … [the Symmetrical Supports] patent in suit.”

As he had done for his previous two patents, Land batted each one away, spelling out for the judge the distinctions between each from the mechanism taught and claimed by his patent. Some of the references were other Polaroid patents in the names of other Polaroid researchers, covering alternative approaches tried during the SX-70 development project but rejected as unreliable.

Carr then offered into evidence a collection of seven early Land patents, each of which had expired before the lawsuit had commenced. He took Land through each of them, trying to pin him down on what the covered invention was. They all apparently related to the basic instant film unit structure of using a pod to contain the processing composition, with some relating to various aspects of stabilizing a sepia image. Carr could not have been unhappy when it eventually became clear that, even for the inventor, distinguishing between the various patents in terms of the specific invention they actually covered and claimed was no easy task.

…hour after hour, Carr and Land sparred back and forth, with the witness parsing each question into oblivion. Land resisted providing simple and straightforward answers to even simple questions.

“It’s a simple question… . Do they or don’t they?”7 Land rejoined instantaneously, “I think there is no simple answer to your simple question.” “Then give me a complex answer,” snapped the now red-faced Carr…

…those aren’t the film units in the process,” Land explained.11 “They are highly idealized statements… . I always have the fear that if I agree with your simple questions … I am by implication agreeing that these charts are indeed a description of the product, and they are not… . I am worried about generalizations implicit in the question that makes me a witness to something … that I don’t believe,” he protested. “I don’t know if it is my place to object,” Land wondered, turning to the judge in frustration, “but I object to being such a witness.” Judge Zobel immediately jumped in to respond, “You are putting Mr. Kerr out of a job, Dr. Land.” All eyes turned to Polaroid’s counsel, but implicit in his response was an acknowledgment that his witness had the proceedings well under control. “I will be very quiet, your Honor,” said Kerr.

Although Land provided a detailed distinction, at least on a superficial layman’s reading of the language of the two technical documents, the processes did sound an awful lot alike, which was Carr’s main point.

When Land finished, Carr couldn’t resist making an embarrassed quip, perhaps realizing too late that he had again opened the door for more testimony from the witness than he had sought, testimony that did not necessarily help his case.

“I don’t think I want to take that position,” replied Land. “I’d like you to take a position about that, Dr. Land,” Carr said. “I don’t think I have to,” Land responded, and Carr turned to the judge for help. “If you can answer the question, please answer it,” the judge advised Land. “If you cannot, say so.” “I cannot answer the question,” was Land’s response. Carr inquired, “Dr. Land, tell me, is it your position that you can’t answer the question or that you won’t answer the question?” “Ask the question again and I’ll tell you which of those it is,” responded the witness.

Zobel turned to the witness and asked, “Do you think it’s unfair?” “Yes,” Land replied, “but I am used to it,” as he launched into a lecture for the next several minutes on the flaws in Carr’s description of the apparatus.

…they certainly were not unhappy that Carr’s cross-examination had provided the witness with yet another chance to make his best pitch. Carr pressed on with some questions, trying to limit the damage, but he likely soon realized that he was doing more damage than good and so finally uttered the words everyone had been waiting for: “I have no further questions at this time on cross-examination, your Honor.”

The one-upmanship continued until Land ordered the single most expensive bottle on the astronomically expensive Ritz wine list, a rare and exquisite Puligny Montrachet. Everyone enjoyed the libation, but the process of ordering it was, in some ways, just another demonstration of Land’s tenacity. He never gave in to Carr on the witness stand and, in this final meeting with the legal brain trust, he was not about to give in to William K. Kerr.

On October 12, the Fuji Photo Film Company of Japan announced that it would be introducing its own instant camera and film products.5 Although initially the sale of these products was slated only for Japan, the industry consensus was that a U.S. introduction was inevitable.

Fuji’s film and camera system was to be compatible with Kodak’s. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal that Kodak had issued licenses to Fuji in 1979 that enabled the products of the two companies to be interchangeable.

Why had Fuji chosen this very moment in the Polaroid litigation (at a time when Land was still on the witness stand) to make a statement that seemed somewhat pointless, since no date was given for the availability of this new product line?

Could Kodak have convinced its licensee that making such an announcement at this juncture would help Kodak clear the road into the instant photography market for both companies?

Trautweiler’s testimony turned into a dialectic between judge and witness with counsel standing by as an observer. After some time, as their to-and-fro came to a conclusion, Carr apparently felt slightly embarrassed that the discussion had gone on so long. He assured Zobel that “it [was] not intended to be a day-long discourse, your Honor.” “Why not?” responded the judge, “I might even learn something.”

The witness had lost his train of thought, and Carr seemed to realize that he had to pare down his examination. “Would it be useful to take a recess?” Judge Zobel offered. “Yes,” responded Carr, “because I would like to minimize harassment. Not harassment by the Court,” he quickly added. “We will take a recess so that you may eliminate all of the harassment materials,” Judge Zobel announced, continuing to display her sense of humor.

And did you also conclude at some point in time that the SX-70 performed its many functions through such wholly novel, optical, mechanical, chemical and electronic designs as to justify Polaroid’s statement that it probably includes more technology than any other consumer product in the world today? A: I did.24 There was a stunned silence in the courtroom. Schwartz walked over to the witness box and handed Kaprelian a copy of an article he had written in 1976 reviewing the history of American cameras since 1840 for a special edition of the magazine Photomethods entitled “A Tribute to American Ingenuity.”

Although Schwartz had effectively cross-examined Adelstein about his opinion, undermining it as best he could, Land was livid when he read the transcript. According to Land, not only was Adelstein’s opinion based on what he considered to be an inadequate scientific understanding, but Adelstein had felt free to declare Land wrong despite having admittedly zero actual experience in the field about which he was testifying—the design and construction of integral instant film units. Considering his lack of experience, the air of confidence with which Adelstein had offered his baseless opinions offended Land’s scientific sensibilities profoundly. Land was determined to refute Adelstein completely and dramatically—and insisted to Schwartz that he be given that opportunity.

Ever the scientist, Land told Schwartz early in their conversations about a possible rebuttal appearance that he wanted to conduct some demonstrations in the courtroom to illustrate visually that Adelstein had it all wrong. Schwartz was less than enthusiastic when he first heard about this idea. It was a basic tenet of litigation that one should avoid, if at all possible, conducting an experiment or a demonstration in a courtroom.42 The litigation annals include a litany of such experiments gone wrong, the most infamous in Fish & Neave lore being the demonstration of the unbreakable light bulb, which shattered right on cue when it was dropped in court.

Land had initially told him that he intended to conduct this particular demonstration with a stack of $100 bills.47 Schwartz advised his client that this was not his best idea, and the irrepressible Land admitted almost as much to Judge Zobel. “I wanted to do this with dollar bills,” was what Land told the judge as he began his presentation, “but my lawyer said it would be in bad taste.”

To prove that he, not Adelstein, was right, Land took one of the old curled film units, showed it to the judge, and predicted that “if one were to cut this out and peel it apart … the sheet would become flat… . In other words,” he predicted, “they are not significantly deformed or stretched,” as Adelstein had testified.51 It was a bold statement. After all, the film units had been curled like the letter C since the late 1960s. With that, Land took a pair of scissors, cut around the edges of the film unit, and peeled the two plastic support sheets apart. Precisely as he had predicted, they immediately gave up their curl and lay flat on the table.52 It was as close to a jaw-dropping moment as likely ever occurs in a patent trial.

“Do you agree with his explanation?” Schwartz inquired. Land responded with no attempt to hide his indignation. “I am sorry to say that I can remember no part of it that was correct,” he said.

…while he seemed to appreciate his lawyers’ efforts, Land had always had a problem in praising colleagues directly and personally.3 Land did manage to convey his appreciation to Schwartz in other characteristic ways. For example, with Chequer along, Land gave his lawyer a personal tour of the Rowland Institute—the new research facility Land was building in Cambridge. For Schwartz, it was a grand gesture, a “surreal” experience. This was the closest to an expression of friendship and appreciation as one could expect from the reserved and complex Land.

Verdict Fallout

When the proposed findings of fact were filed on July 30, 1982, the posttrial process was, indeed, finally over, and everyone hunkered down nervously to await the decision. Over six years had passed since Kodak had introduced its instant photography system, prompting Polaroid to react immediately by filing suit.

Walking out of the courthouse on the last day of the trial, Frank Carr was sure that he had won.35 As the Kodak team disbanded, Cecil Quillen returned to Kodak headquarters in Rochester also feeling very confident about the outcome of the case.

On that occasion, as he completed his extemporaneous remarks, and apparently aware that his days at the company were numbered, Land asked the shareholders for their support: “I don’t mean in terms of money, I mean in terms of enjoyment of the creative life.”50 His voice broke as he uttered what were in fact to be his last public words as chairman of Polaroid, and the shareholders erupted into enthusiastic applause as he sat down. Reportedly, there was not a dry eye in the room.

Land was leaving his company in solid financial shape. According to an analysis published by Barrons, which noted that Polaroid was not “approaching fossil status,” the company had more than $330 million on hand in cash and securities when Land left, and shareholders’ equity of $952 million.65 Remarkably, the company had but $124 million in long-term debt. “Polaroid’s woes are not financial,” it was acknowledged; rather, the problem was about the direction the company would take going forward.66 After all, Land was a hard act to follow.

The crux of the matter was that Polaroid stood before her, nine full years after filing suit over Kodak’s introduction of its instant cameras and film, still seeking justice. Patents, after all, have a limited life of only seventeen years. Since the trial had ended, two of Polaroid’s patents had expired. The other eight had remaining terms in the range of only three to six years.

…on Friday, September 13, 1985, after three and a half years of deliberation, and nine and a half years after the case was filed, Judge Rya Zobel broke perhaps another record by finally announcing her decision in the landmark case of Polaroid Corporation v. Eastman Kodak Company.

When Judge Zobel’s opinion in the case finally arrived, it weighed in at a hefty 122 pages.

The opinion specifically gave “credit [to] the testimony of Dr. Land” in dismissing Trautweiler’s testimony that Land’s patent on sepia techniques taught the color process if one merely dropped the words “color” and “dye” from the L-Coat patent.

When the opinion discussed Land’s Symmetrical Supports patent, it was clear once more that Land’s expertise had won the day. Kodak had tried to belittle Land’s invention by claiming that the only thing taught in the patent was the use of polyester as film supports, a material that had long been known in the photographic art. The judge plainly rejected this simplistic view…

…most importantly, the court’s opinion pointed out that prior to Land’s breakthrough, the consensus had been that one of the supports needed “to be water permeable so that the film unit could dry fairly quickly. Contrary to that prevailing wisdom,” it observed, “Dr. Land believed that with the presence of the [L-Coat] polymeric acid layer in the film unit a wet environment would not harm the image… . That Dr. Land’s hypothesis is correct has been proven by countless film units produced” by following the teachings of his patent. “Thus,” Judge Zobel ruled, “I find that the … [Land] patent discloses substantially more than the choice of a known material.”

In the end, the reason Polaroid prevailed on this patent appears to be largely because of the extraordinary effectiveness of Land as a witness, bolstered once again by the big-picture, real-world story Schwartz had worked so hard to present. The irony of this result was inescapable. Schwartz had passed over this patent as a candidate for asserting against Kodak. Now, almost ten years later, Land had clearly succeeded at demonstrating how something that, at first glance, might seem a trivial problem with an easy solution, was actually an obstacle more complex and elusive in the laboratory, both for him and for his rivals at Kodak.

Land released a statement from his office at the Rowland Institute declaring how “thrilled” he was with the result.37 “We worked so hard the first time around on the contents of the film and the camera and the patents on it,” he recalled, “and we worked very hard trying to make clear to the court what the essence of every invention was… . Even though I no longer have any economic interests,” Land pointed out, “I have enormous spiritual and intellectual interests… . I shared so much of the adventure with so many, many colleagues… . As I sample the … [court decision], it’s clear that while the technical content is all there, the judge understood the arguments and understood the merits,” said Land. “So we feel very happy.”

Carr appeared stunned.58 While the Kodak lawyers continued to believe that there was virtually no likelihood that Zobel would grant this most unusual and drastic request, they were shocked that Schwartz had the audacity to stand up and make such an aggressive push for it.

Ironically, Kodak received word of the judge’s decision in a most unusual, and awkward, manner. As the news began circulating, Frank Carr was not able to get any information through Kodak’s local Boston counsel, so he was forced to call the offices of his opponent, where one of Schwartz’s young partners, Patricia Martone, confirmed the decision had been made and told Carr that she had a copy.9 “Were we enjoined?” Carr asked her. Martone read him the first paragraph: “Polaroid’s request for injunctive relief is granted, and Kodak’s motion for a stay pending appeal is denied.”

This was an astounding and history-setting turn of events. As a practical matter, without quick relief from an appellate court in setting aside or delaying Judge Zobel’s order, Kodak would indeed be required to get out of the instant photography business altogether, even before its appeal had been heard and decided. The company would literally have to take all of its cameras and film from store shelves across the United States.

…the court set January 6 as the date for oral argument on Kodak’s appeals—just three days before the injunction was to take effect.41 Chief Judge Markey’s handling of the matter actually represented an implicit rejection of Kodak’s effort to have the stay issue resolved more expeditiously. It left the defendant on death row.

Ever since he had read Kodak president Kay Whitmore’s published comments that the company had made no contingency plans for shutting down its instant photography business, despite the existence of a court order to do so, Schwartz had been looking for an opportunity to bring these comments to the attention of the judges who had Kodak’s fate in their hands.

In Polaroid’s very short response, he quoted Whitmore’s statements verbatim for the judges to read.54 He also attached a copy of the entire article, hoping that the judges would also see Whitmore’s arrogant complaint that Kodak had lost the case only because “we got caught with a judge who doesn’t understand the law.”55 Schwartz thought these published statements would have a big impact on the appellate panel. In the vernacular, he thought they “would blow them away.”

The court’s decision was quick, decisive, and merciless. Within twenty-four hours, on January 7, 1986, Kodak’s disastrous foray into instant photography came to a crushing end when the appeals court refused to vacate or even to delay the effect of the injunction.

Before the sun had set on that same day, January 8, 1986, the Supreme Court, without comment, ruled on Kodak’s request. Chief Justice Burger, without providing a reason, recused himself from the decision, and so it fell to Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. to render the Court’s judgment. It was as simple as it was devastating. “Denied, L.F.P., Jr., 6 PM, Jan. 8, 1986” was stamped upon Kodak’s application for a stay.61 Kodak had lost—again.

A program was initiated offering a trade-in of the now useless cameras for either a fifty-dollar cash rebate in the form of Kodak coupons, a single share of Kodak common stock, or a Kodak disc camera and two discs of film. The offer left camera owners scrambling as they tried to figure out which was the best deal.

By June, Kodak had to cancel the entire program when more than fourteen class action lawsuits were brought against it by unhappy customers.80 It also learned, apparently belatedly, that in order to offer the stock swap, it first had to get permission from each of the fifty states.81 Eventually, the class action lawsuits with the owners of obsolete Kodak instant cameras were reportedly settled for $150 million.

Nothing Kodak did seemed to satisfy an irate and baffled public. An outpouring of increasingly embarrassing ideas abounded on how to dispose of millions of now suddenly useless Kodak instant cameras, comprising more than 16,000 tons of plastic, according to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.83 Suggestions included dumping them in Lake Ontario near Rochester to create an artificial reef for fisherman, or melting them down and using them as landfill to build a theme park called “Picture Island.”

…this time Polaroid did not omit the balance of the sentence Kodak had so doggedly insisted be included: “Employees were urged not to let development be ‘constrained by … potential patent infringement’ but to leave that concern to Kodak’s Patent Department.” Dismissing Kodak’s pretense for seeking another review of the case, Polaroid contended that “revisitation of the standard of patentability could not alter the outcome of the present case and controversy.”95 Apparently, the Supreme Court agreed. Just five weeks later, at the opening of its 1986 October term, it announced that Kodak’s petition to have the case reviewed was denied. Consistent with Supreme Court practice, no reason was given, the only note to the ruling being that Justice Scalia, who had taken his seat on the Court only days before, “took no part in the consideration or decision of this petition.”

Between removing all of its cameras and film from store shelves across the country and shuttering its manufacturing operations, its defeat had reportedly already cost Kodak the “staggering” amount of $494 million. It had also cost Kodak an additional $150 million to settle class action lawsuits with unhappy customers. Yet a determination on the amount of compensatory damages Kodak would have to pay to Polaroid was still to be made.

…the damages phase was also tried without a jury. It lasted for a total of ninety-six trial days, even longer than the liability trial.

After Polaroid also threatened to appeal, the two parties, at long last, settled the case for $925 million (more than $1.6 billion in 2014 dollars) on July 16, 1991.14 It was fifteen years, three months, and twenty days after the lawsuit had begun. The final award was much less than Polaroid had sought and much more than Kodak thought it should pay. But it was a historic and unprecedented penalty. As of this writing in 2014, it still remains the largest satisfied judgment awarded by a court in a patent infringement case in U.S. history. Polaroid’s victory was stunning and total.

Aftermath & Decline

…it was clear that a new era took hold in the mid-1980s, and many looked on the result in the Polaroid v. Kodak case as the turning point. The New York Times declared, “The Kodak-Polaroid patent dispute is the most prominent example of an increasingly pro-patent sentiment in American Courts.”

When interviewed about the trend, Schwartz stressed, in words that would surely have elicited a satisfied nod from Edwin Land: “the emphasis [in this new era] is on protecting a climate for innovation.”

Zobel did not, in fact, rely on post-shift standards of patentability. She rendered her decision based upon federal appellate law that, for the most part, preexisted the new Federal Circuit. In the entire 122-page decision, the new court is cited on just one single point. Every other citation of legal authority is to precedent established in the various federal courts prior to 1982. Not only that, the overwhelming majority of authority relied on by Judge Zobel dates from the period prior to Kodak’s introduction of its instant products in 1976—that is, during the period in which Carr wrote his opinion letters.

Even years after the trial, Carr professed that he “thought we’d be successful [at trial] and I still don’t understand why we weren’t.”

As articulated by J. Allen Jones, Kodak’s chief in-house patent counsel, prior to Kodak’s entry: “Our optimism [regarding the outcome of a lawsuit] is higher when we look at each patent individually, than it is when we look at the aggregate of all the problems viewed together, since obviously the chance of losing on at least one patent increases as greater numbers of patents are brought into litigation.”39 But Chandler testified that Kodak elected to go forward nonetheless because management believed that through its patent clearance process—which, incidentally and perhaps conveniently, had found not a single Polaroid patent that Kodak might have infringed to be valid—they had “managed the risk to a low level.”

…management, in particular Fallon and Chandler, decided to rely on the possibility that not a single asserted Polaroid patent was valid, while disregarding the probability that one or more of those patents might actually hold up in court. This judgment is hard to figure, unless, of course, there was something more going on behind the considerations of Kodak management—either consciously or subconsciously—other than a totally objective evaluation of the business and legal risks.

…nothing could or would divert Kodak from its determined course. Its senior management, isolated and arrogant, had become increasingly frustrated over its inability to wring a license from Polaroid that would have enabled it to enter the instant market without the risk of patent litigation.

…while each and every one of Carr’s opinion letters regarding the seven patents adjudged valid and infringed turned out to be wrong, the effort itself undertaken by Kodak was, as the judge described it, “a patent clearance process that could serve as a model for what the law requires.”46 In effect, Kodak’s A for effort trumped Carr’s F for accuracy.

When offered a settlement by Polaroid just prior to trial that would have granted a license to use the Polaroid patents at a royalty rate that Quillen admitted later they “wish[ed] like hell we’d taken,”52 Kodak refused even to negotiate and pressed ahead. As one senior Kodak executive admitted in the aftermath of the defeat, “The cost is beyond the money we paid. It was a blow to our prestige.”53 Having been saddled with the worst defeat in the history of patent jurisprudence, Kodak’s post-decision rationalizations in this case may be understandable. But they are pure revisionism.

Years later, Judge Zobel recalled that Land “was ‘fabulous’ as a witness because he was fighting for his intellectual children, ‘protecting what was his.’”

…despite being the technological marvel of its time, instant photography is now, essentially, obsolete and swept away to the vagaries of eBay and local flea markets. And the two companies who fought this epic battle have followed that technology to the business scrap heap.

…in the 1970s came a new generation of 35-millimeter cameras and their high-quality images, used by professionals for decades but made accessible to amateurs thanks to features like autofocusing and autoexposure. Even more importantly, at the same time, the convenience of film processing grew exponentially. The number of local photo “minilabs” grew from 1,000 to 14,000 in the 1980s.

Even as Land sat on the witness stand in the fall of 1981, Morita came to America to preview Sony’s “revolutionary Mavica video still camera.”6 Nonetheless, given that the Sony camera was not scheduled for release until 1983, and even then at a high projected retail cost of $1,000, the consensus in the industry was that this new technology would not “dent consumer markets before 1990.”7 As a result, both Polaroid and Kodak initially resisted the allure of this new technology and underestimated its long-term impact.

Polaroid remained wedded to the technology it had pioneered and reportedly “turned down flat” an offer to partner with Japan’s Hitachi Ltd. on its version of a filmless camera.9 Although it later reversed course and made a belated foray into “electronic photography,” Polaroid never became a real player in digital technology…

Without its visionary founder or a perceptive management able to steer Polaroid on to a new course, the company gradually eroded through the 1990s in tandem with the demise of the technology that had given it life in the first instance.

…the company was perhaps not ready for the challenge because of its “unique” early history. “I don’t know of any new business today that isn’t open to competition,” McCune once explained. “Yet, we had a long period without direct competition. Now our competitors are companies like Toshiba and Sony. We are moving closer to what they are doing and they are moving closer to us.”13 Further, Polaroid was no longer the innovator in the fields it found itself competing in. Instead of leading the way, it was joining the parade.

“One day Polaroid stopped dreaming of the future and soon found itself living in the past.”

Kodak, instead, hung on for too long to its traditional business model—rooted in its existing photographic technology—of selling “lots of cameras at low prices to chalk up outsized profits on film, inks, chemicals and papers used for making prints.”16 This is not a unique pitfall for technology companies. In the 1950s, RCA was at the forefront of research on the liquid crystals that would eventually make possible our LCD flat screens of today. Yet in the late 60s, the company dropped its program because of fears that this new technology might adversely affect the revenues it earned from its existing tube-television patents. Around the same time, Sony made a similar decision to eschew the development of LCD technology because it was afraid of losing sales of its Trinitron television tubes.

Tragically, it appears that the company’s descent was, in large part, self-inflicted, its management having been slow to react even when the writing was clearly on the wall about the inevitability of the shift from film to digital-based photography.

“Kodak’s lethargy was partly caused by an insular, tradition-bound management.”27 From its view alone atop the amateur photography hill, it espoused a “proprietary view” of the photography business.28 Kodak’s chief technical officer, Edwin Przybylowicz, called it the “Monroe County syndrome.”29 “We’re an insular place,” he acknowledged. In many ways, these are the same corporate characteristics that seemed to plague Kodak over the years in its decision-making process with respect to instant photography.

Legacy & Culture

Polaroid … was the Apple of its day: feisty, ubiquitous, pioneering. The Polaroid camera was like the Mac, with all other consumer cameras PCs. There was the same sense of engineering superiority and cultural cachet… . Polaroid uniquely stood at the intersection of science, business and art.

He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history to Thomas Edison and Elihu Thomson, the two men whose companies merged in 1892 to form General Electric.

I believe quite simply that the small company of the future will be as much a research organization as it is a manufacturing company, and that this new kind of company is the frontier for the next generation. 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. Indeed, it will be expected that the career of the pure scientist will be as much in the corporation laboratory as in the university. We feel that the industrial environment can be as stimulating to the development of pure science as the university has been. We should like to bring into industry the kind of professional ethics that characterize the relationship between pure scientists. We should like to have knowledge of the scientific method permeate our organizations … in short, a continuum between pure science in the university and pure science in industry should stimulate and enrich our social system… . Internally this business will be a new type of social unit. All will regard themselves as … having as their common purpose learning new things and applying that knowledge for public welfare… . This new kind of company is the frontier for the next generation.

…as early as the 1940s, Land talked about creating a work environment he termed “Semitopia”—that is, a working atmosphere that would approach perfection as closely as it could in an imperfect world.

…since Land recognized science as “the pursuit of failure,” a tolerance for it was a “cornerstone” of his workplace. All that he demanded was that the individual persist in spite of any failure. As Land liked to say, “Every creative act is a sudden cessation of stupidity.”

…part of Land’s Semitopia concept was the “sun-satellite theory” of organization. This was a motivational tool that made each worker feel as if he or she were the center of his or her own work effort, with colleagues serving as supporting satellites.

Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve, pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs, pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution, and where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration—involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s rewards would come from this involvement.

Land attracted to this kind of nurturing environment a host of scientists who pursued their interests unfettered by normal corporate constraints. For example, the extensive research done at Polaroid in the field of holography may not have resulted immediately in a commercial product for Polaroid of economic significance, but it helped to carry out, in the words of distinguished MIT professor Stephen Benton, Land’s intent that “the huge industrial engine of Polaroid should enable interesting scientific research to be undertaken at will, while providing interesting working lives for all the members of ‘the Company.’”

…observers with more of a pure business perspective might point to this kind of activity as wasteful and even antithetical to the primary goal of corporate existence, the maximization of profit. But to Land, it was this amalgam of pragmatic, targeted business considerations, with more creative and free-reining scientific and technical pursuits, that would catalyze a crucible of technological exploration from which useful assets would emerge for his company and, equally as important, from which one might ultimately hope to provide the most benefit to mankind in the long run.

[Land] fashioned a collegial, knowledge-seeking organization with a highly committed work force. Status distinctions were minimized and career development and job enrichment were emphasized. Long a leader in socially responsible business practices … [Polaroid] acted far in advance of legislation regarding employment opportunities for women and minorities and employee benefits.

Polaroid was out in front of the effort to combat the white minority government’s policy of apartheid in South Africa. It began programs to change the system from within as early as 1971. When those initiatives failed, Polaroid cut off all shipments of its products to the country in 1977, declaring, “We abhor the policy of apartheid.”

Land believed that, in the end, Polaroid was “one of the strongest companies in the world in terms of those spiritual and intellectual qualities that lead to human strength.”61 In this regard, Land has left a special legacy in the world of business, one that would become a model for companies of the future.

In the words of John Sculley, whom Jobs recruited to lead Apple in 1983, “these were two geniuses who totally understood each other from the vantage point that they knew how to take technology and transform it into magic.”62 “Not only was [Land] one of the great inventors of our time,” said Jobs in a 1985 interview, “but, more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that… . The man is a national treasure, I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.”63 Early in his career, as the founder of a fledgling Silicon Valley company, Jobs had the opportunity to visit with Land, who described to Jobs his vision for the technology company of the future. Jobs confessed to a reporter that getting to meet Land was “like visiting a shrine.”64 Many years later, Jobs admiringly assured Land that in building Apple, he had tried to emulate the ideals Land had described to him. This occurred in the mid-1980s, when Jobs noticed Land across the room in a Boston restaurant. He hurried over to pay his respects, but Land neither recognized nor remembered him immediately. Jobs, unfazed, introduced himself: “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Steve Jobs and I came by when we were setting up Apple Computer,” he told him.65 A subsequent meeting in the same period at Land’s Rowland Institute lab was organized by Tom Hughes, a former Land colleague and then art director for Macintosh. Hughes described seeing an emotional side of Jobs in Land’s presence that he had never previously witnessed. “It was sort of a father and son reunion. Steve was so clearly in admiration of Dr. Land and taken with every word he had to share. It was a very touching moment in time.”66…

Jobs arguably became the Edwin Land of his generation. In all but their attire—even in the lab, Land always wore a tie and jacket, while Jobs was known for his more informal look of jeans and a black mock turtleneck—the two men embodied brilliant “troublemakers” (Jobs’ characterization) who had the creative vision, as well as the innate intelligence and ability, to build multibillion-dollar companies. In 2010, when Jobs was previewing Apple’s iPad for some journalists prior to its introduction, he was asked what consumer and market research had been conducted to inform Apple’s development process. Jobs’ reply was pure Land, almost a verbatim reprise of comments Land had made many times throughout his career: “None. It isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want.”

Ironically, in 1982 Jobs bemoaned to John Sculley the fact that Land had been cast out from Polaroid when all he had done was to “blow a lousy few million [on Polavision],” a statement that foreshadowed his suffering the same fate when he was famously dethroned from Apple by Sculley shortly thereafter.

In a rare interview, his wife, Helen, provided a personal glimpse into life with Edwin Land. “There are occasions when I will be talking with him directly and I know that he’s not listening to me,” she recalled. “His mind is miles away, but all I have to say to him is ‘Polaroid,’ and immediately I have his full and complete attention.”