Innovation from Polaroid circa 1959: Stimuli and the Eye + Muppets Ad

I find this quote so fascinating from Edwin H. Land, the founder of Polaroid Corporation; taken from a piece in a 1959 issue of Scientific American magazine, in which he talks about the eye responding to stimuli:

"No student of color vision can fail to be awed by the sensitive discernment with which the eye responds to the variety of stimuli it receives. Recently, my colleagues and I have learned that this mechanism is far more wonderful than had been thought. The eye makes distinctions of amazing subtlety. It does not need nearly so much information as actually flows to it from the everyday world. It can build colored worlds of its own out of informative materials that have always been supposed to be inherently drab and colorless."

First Polaroid CameraEdwin Land, an American inventor and physicist invented the Polaroid; a one-step camera that made is possible for a photographer to extract and view a print immediately after the photo was taken. He founded the Polaroid Corporation and the first camera was sold in November, 1948.

In 1960, Land collaborated with the Henry Dreyfuss company to produce a newly designed product, the Automatic 100 Land Camera. In 1965, another camera called the Polaroid Swinger was introduced and sold for less than $20. The company went on to make hundreds of models over the years. For a huge and complete list of Polaroid cameras, visit this site for make/model numbers and information.

Sadly, on February, 8, 2008, in an interview with the Boston Globe concerning the upcoming Zink-compatible printer, Polaroid “announces” all instant film production will cease in 2008/2009.

*Cool promotional short film from 1971 featuring the SX-70 System that was first sold in 1972

* I love this 1981 Muppets Polaroid commercial

Comments

[Jamie Baby]

WOW! What a great piece you wrote here! How interesting! I love the Muppets almost as much as sushi, babycakes - and i never saw that video, either - so thanks for everything! You are a great writer! We should collaborate and write something fun. I am thinking of writing a book about vinyl and the entire movement - how it went from cassette to vinyl, then once cd's came, it's almost like an underground movement now on the east coast. Oh my, how I *oh so* miss the indie shops and peruzing for 45's and almbums for hours on end! Wow, I am off-topic now, but, yeah ;)