Who is edwin land

Before Land, researchers built components to control polarization from rock crystals, which were assigned almost magical names and properties, though they merely decreased the velocity or amplitude of light waves traveling at specific orientations.

His inexpensive polarizer made it possible to reliably and practically filter light so only wavelengths with a particular orientation would pass through.

Land founded the Polaroid Corporation in to commercialize his new technology. His sheet polarizers found applications ranging from the identification of chemical compounds to adjustable sunglasses. Polarizing filters became standard in photography to reduce glare.

Today the principles of polarized light are used in most computer and cellphone screens, to enhance contrast, decrease glare and even turn on or off individual pixels. Polarizing filters help researchers visualize structures that might not be seen otherwise — from astronomical features to biological structures.

In my own field of vision science, polarization imaging localizes classes of chemicals, such as protein molecules leaking from blood vessels in diseased eyes. Polarization is also combined with high-resolution imaging techniques to detect cellular damage beneath the reflective retinal surface.

Before the days of high-speed digital capture of data and affordable high-resolution displays, or use of videotape, Polaroid photography was the method of choice to obtain output in many scientific labs.

Experiments or medical tests needed graphical or pictorial output for interpretation, often from an analog oscilloscope which plotted out a voltage or current change over time.

A common example in vision science is the recording of eye movements. For decades, research labs and medical facilities have used setups consisting of a Polaroid camera and a mounting rig to collect electrical signals displayed on oscilloscope screens. The format sizes are less than dazzling compared to modern digital resolutions, but they were revolutionary at the time. McLaren, K. Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists , Mollon, J.

The Listener , Ottoson, D. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Zeki, S. Scientific American , no. In July the year-old President of Polaroid retired, but not from work. With more than patents behind him he decided to concentrate on his life-long, although sporadic, fascination with human colour vision.

In Land saw the potential of a vacant lot beside the Charles River at Kendall Square and he decided to build there his Rowland Institute for Science. He retired there to pursue his hobbies and research.

I have been unable to establish the reason for the name Rowland, other than that it was a name used among the Land family. Without any outside grant support, Land attracted a small band of kindred spirits to work on a wide range of subjects ranging through artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms, scanning tunnelling microscopy, holography, protein dynamics and, his long-time interest, colour vision.

A colleague of mine, distinguished for his research on colour vision, visited him there in May and described it as a cross between an art gallery and the private laboratory of a 19th-century gentleman scientist.

This Medal has been established by the Optical Society of America and the Society for Imaging Science and Technology in honour of Land and in recognition of his unique career as scientist, technologist, industrialist, humanist and public servant.

The medal recognizes pioneering work empowered by scientific research to create inventions, technologies and their resulting products. It went to Howard C. Rogers, who had succeeded Land as Director of Research at Polaroid in It was an election that pleased him a great deal but, soon after his election, his health began to fail and after a period of hospitalization he was confined to his home in Cambridge. It was almost impossible for him to come to London to sign the Charter Book.

This was an unusual procedure, not often done. Only once before had a signing ceremony been held overseas, when Professor A. Hill obtained the signatures of two Fellows from India in in the presence of the Viceroy, Viscount Waverley. After some deliberation, Council resolved to send a page of the book which will eventually be bound into the Charter Book. Professor S. His face reflected serenity, kindness, and the knowledge that he had enriched lives of many people and achieved a great deal.

Land thrived on the challenges of scientific exploration. His favourite scientific interest was the study of human colour vision in complex, real-life scenes. This began with the study of two-colour projection using red and white light.

It extended to Mondrian displays - overlapping rectangles of plain colours, after Piet Mondrian , leader of neoplasticism -- and to computer simulation of real scenes. The Maxwell experiment used three black and white transparencies, each taken and projected with a red, green, or blue colour filter.

Land loved to experiment. He would study the effect of more red light or less blue light. What happened with different contrast film? To believe any hypothesis Land needed the feeling of certainty that only comes from many probing experiments.

At the end of a long evening of experimenting with three projectors, Land decided to go home. A colleague had shut off the blue projector and had put the green filter away, leaving an image of red and white light.

The group went home. He had assimilated the colour adaptation ideas handed down from Helmholtz He searched for evidence of colour adaptation as the explanation for what he saw.

Instead he showed that there was no experimental support for the notion that colour constancy is caused by colour adaptation in complex coloured scenes. Land created a better understanding of how we see the real-world of complex images. What was special about Land was his passion for doing experiments, along with his quick mind that playfully questioned everything, particularly his own hypotheses.

He literally could not sleep when he found an experiment that was trying to tell him something. I raised a mild criticism and he said he would have to think about it. About a year later he phoned me in the morning and asked if we could try an experiment in the afternoon. Of course, I agreed. He then spoke to his pilot and asked me to meet him at the local Cambridge airport at 12 noon. I returned Edwin to the Cambridge airport and then drove the short distance to my home.

I could hear a jet-aircraft taking off and, to my surprise, it flew over my house as it climbed. I suddenly realized that he had planned his itinerary down to the last detail. He must have found out where my home and laboratory were in relation to the airport so that his visit would not inconvenience me. He put his plan into action as soon as he knew he had made a fast time across the Atlantic and could keep his appointment in London. Lastly, he could satisfy his obsession of doing at least one experiment each day.

Land performed thousands of experiments studying two-colour projections. He studied combinations of different filters, different contrast films, positive and negative projections, additivity of stereo projections. The experiments on red and white projections fascinated Land.

He frequently gave lectures on the subject. His favourite audience was college undergraduates. His lectures were as much on the scientific method as they were on colour. He would not just talk about his experiments, he would bring the experiments to the lecture hall so that the students could do them with him.

The experiments used an array of papers with controlled illumination. Later these experiments led to the black and white Mondrian experiments that showed that the same quanta catch at the receptors could generate any level of lightness from white to black in a single field of view.

This was followed by the colour Mondrian experiments that showed that the number of quanta caught by any point on the retina could appear in any colour. It demonstrated, in a very dramatic fashion, that the determinant of colour is spatial in nature.

It is the relationship of the quanta caught at one point or other points in the field of view that controls the appearance. Lightness and colour are field phenomena, not point phenomena. Land often quipped that the history of colour vision would have been fundamentally different if Maxwell had studied electromagnetic fields before he invented the colour top - the basis of the science of colorimetry.

Colorimetry has extraordinary predictive power for colour matches. But, because all the information used in the calculation comes from a single point in the image, it cannot offer any direct clue as to the appearance of the colour. Both before and after Maxwell, there have been many experiments that pointed out the limitations of single-point colour calculations. If Maxwell had studied colour 30 years later, he might have thought of colour as an array.

However, Maxwell did not and Land became the principal proponent of colour as a field phenomena. To explain the results of various colour constancy experiments, Land proposed the Retinex Theory. He coined the word retinex made from the words retina and cortex to de-signate the physiological mechanisms that generate these mathematically independent images: My proposal did not demand that the retinal elements of the same peak sensitivity have to be connected to each other.

Instead, somewhere in the retinal-cerebral structure, elements associated with the same wavelength characteristics co-operate to form independent images in terms of lightness. Even before Pearl Harbor 7 December , the Polaroid team were thinking well ahead on how to help the Allies and they gave years of advice and service to the US Government over a very wide field of applications.

Early contributions were infrared polarizers, heat-stable filters, dark adaptation goggles for night-time fighting and the polarizing ring sight. To design a high-quality aerial camera lens requires millions of iterative high-precision calculations, and Land, working with James Baker of Harvard, was able to achieve this using one of the early computers. The Lockheed U2 spy plane was a power glider that climbed rapidly to a very high altitude 13 miles ; the pilot then switched off the power unit and glided to a lower altitude as the sequence of stereoscopic photographs were taken.

The first flight took place on 4 July This was such a threat to the USSR that they rushed to develop a high-altitude rocket to destroy it. Land did much more than developing the U2 camera -- he also helped to design the plane itself. They combined two severe problems into an elegant solution. At the desired altitude, the ambient temperature was sufficiently low to increase the viscosity of the fuel, creating fuel-line problems.

Furthermore, the friction of the atmosphere on the leading edge of the wing caused it to overheat. Land and Johnson routed the fuel along the wing edge so as to preheat the fuel and, at the same time, cool the wing.

As one will learn later, Land was not only a wizard in optics; each of his cameras contained a wealth of ingenious mechanical and electronic parts, albeit hidden from the user. Land told me, with a chuckle, that he managed to convince golfing President Eisenhower to support the U2 project by describing his new camera's point-spread-function in terms of detecting a golf ball at yards, rather than in seconds of arc 4 sec.

A golfer can detect a golf ball with difficulty at about yards 60 sec. In , E. Land was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In his work for the USA national security service was honoured with the W. The Award stated: "It was he whose genius in photography made it possible to conceive a reconnaissance system of extraordinary power [the U2] which he proposed to President Eisenhower, who accepted his recommendation that its development be undertaken.

The optics and other features of those original designs became the foundation of advanced systems in use today. The Polaroid Corporation was founded in and located in Boston, New England, where there were very many other optical, camera and film companies.

It was handheld and the two photographs from the two cameras were placed side by side on a card and viewed through two lenses, incorporating prisms to facilitate the divergence of the two eyes. It was based on the principle of David Brewster , F. Holmes collaborated with a Boston photographer, Joseph L. For the next century photographers travelled the globe with their stereo cameras recording in three dimensions the Wonders of the World.

It developed into a popular parlour pastime of great educational value for parents and their children. The Holmes stereoscope was inexpensive and boxes of photographs could be hired from a local library.

Each box contained a very full and accurate description of the country and its culture. In Land and his co-inventor, Joseph Mallory, designed the vectograph for creating 3-D images for a wide range of applications.

The vectograph could superimpose the two views of a stereoscopic picture on a single sheet of film. It is still extensively used in aerial-photography and satellite reconnaissance. If the two photographs are taken far enough apart, a molehill can be turned into a small mountain by exaggerating the third dimension, using the principle of stereoscopy.

Maps showing suitable hiding places from the direct fire of the enemy could be supplied. This exaggerated stereoscopy is the ultimate in anti-camouflage warfare. In the s the quartz-crystal watch became popular owing to its accurate time-keeping and low cost compared with mechanical versions. Light emitting diodes LEDs were used to display the time, but they used a lot of power and battery replacements were frequent, even when a switch was provided to view the time intermittently; a risky action if one was driving.

Today, many portable computers use this type of display. Boston contained a wealth of talent and Land could recruit and train almost anyone he wished and develop their talent to the maximum. It was important to Land to situate his business activities in an intensely active scientific environment that included most areas of science. The correct name is Joseph Mahler. For his scientific and business achievements, Land was admired by scientists, corporate leaders, and government officials alike.

As a boy, Land was fascinated by light. In particular, he was drawn to the natural phenomenon of light polarization. Polarization refers to a physical property of light waves.

As the waves move forward, they vibrate vertically, horizontally, and at all angles in between. A polarizer acts like a slatted screen, with long, thin, parallel openings. These invisible slats stop all angles of light except those parallel to the openings. By doing so, polarizers provide the ability to select light waves with particular orientations.

Natural polarizers were effective at reducing glare and measuring angles of reflectivity, but they were large and expensive. Land imagined important uses for synthetic polarizers, if they could be produced. Moreover, because glare would be eliminated, headlights could be made brighter, thereby increasing the safety of nighttime driving. In , Land enrolled at Harvard University to study physics, but his desire to conduct research caused him to leave after only a few months in search of more practical opportunities.

There, he worked to develop a synthetic polarizer. Herapath had sought, with little success, to produce large synthetic crystals that would mimic the natural crystals that were the most useful polarizers available at the time. Land recognized an alternative, and he worked to arrange a mass of microscopic crystals to produce the same effect.

He created fine polarizing crystals, suspended them in liquid lacquer, and aligned them using an electromagnet. He then pulled a sheet of celluloid a thin, clear plastic through this solution to make a continuous sheet of crystals. As the lacquer dried, the crystals retained their orientation, and the result was a polarizing sheet that was thin, transparent, and pliable.

In , Land applied for his first patent, a method for producing his polarizing sheets. He returned to Harvard in the same year but left again before completing his undergraduate degree to focus on his emerging business.

By , Land had identified a more promising way to manufacture polarizing sheets: Instead of using electromagnets, he could apply the tiny crystals to a plastic sheet and, by stretching it, achieve parallel alignment of the crystals. Although it took several years to perfect, this method resulted in the commercial production of polarized sheets. In , Land and George W. The company also invented a new product called a vectograph that combined two still images taken from slightly different positions and printed as oppositely-polarized images; using polarized glasses, viewers saw a 3-D image of the subject.

My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible. In , as the United States anticipated its entry into World War II, Land proposed a new task for the young company—to focus its scientific research and manufacturing on technologies that would help to win the impending war.

The U. Polaroid delivered anti-glare goggles for soldiers and pilots, as well as gun sights, viewfinders, cameras, and numerous other optical devices with polarizing lenses. The vectograph, previously a novelty, became a tool for the U. Polaroid earned a reputation among the many companies working toward national goals for delivering optical technologies in short time frames. In addition to leading Polaroid research for military projects, Land also served as a consultant to the National Research Defense Committee, a body that emerged at the onset of WWII to direct non-governmental scientific research for war purposes.

In time, Land would continue his government service, working on Cold War technologies and advising presidents on scientific matters. Around this time, Land played an important role in the synthesis of quinine, the most effective antimalarial medicine then known. Quinine was produced from cinchona, a tropical plant grown primarily in Indonesia. Like other strategic materials that were produced abroad, the U. In , Land hired Robert Burns Woodward — of Harvard University as a Polaroid consultant to find an alternative to the use of quinine in the production of polarizers quinine-based crystals were used to manufacture polarizers at the time and also to explore alternative methods for producing quinine.

The first task was quickly completed, and Woodward then developed a plan for synthesizing quinine. With the help of Polaroid and Harvard, Woodward and his colleague William von Eggers Doering — successfully synthesized quinine in Although it did not lead to a practical method of production, the synthesis was a milestone in the field of organic chemistry and was among the achievements that earned Woodward the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in As WWII drew to a close and the company neared the end of its military service, Land faced a new challenge: What would Polaroid do after the war?

Now leading a much larger company with more employees and greater research expertise than a few years earlier, Land was determined to put his company and its people to work during peacetime. If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it. So you make the system to fulfill that need, rather than starting the other way around, where you have something and wonder what to do with it.

In , during a vacation in Santa Fe, Land took a photo of his daughter, Jennifer, who was then three years old. Land was immediately taken by the concept of instant photography and set off on a long walk to think through the idea.

The instant photography system Land imagined was a radical departure from traditional film processing. In conventional photography, a photographer took a series of photographs on a roll of film and returned it to a laboratory later for development.

There, a technician would work inside a darkroom, a specialized laboratory that contained the materials—chemical baths to start and stop the development, washing and drying equipment, and other supplies—needed to develop film and produce photographic prints. The entire process took several minutes in the laboratory and usually several days from the time a photographer dropped off the film until a print was ready for retrieval. If successful, the system would allow users to evaluate and share images moments after they had been taken, a transformational change from traditional photography.

As in traditional photography, light entered the camera through a lens and was reflected onto a light-sensitive film that recorded a negative image of the scene.

In a negative, dark areas of the scene appear light and light areas appear dark.