Edwin Land
Edwin Land
Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRIwas an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. Among other things, he invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and his retinex theory of color vision. His Polaroid instant camera, which went on sale in late 1948, made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth7 May 1909
CityBridgeport, CT
CountryUnited States of America
The future may require not so much having a new idea as stopping having an old idea.
Famous in our circles is the story of the visiting English banker who in 1948 upon seeing our model 95 camera commented, 'Very interesting, but why would one want a picture in a minute?'
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 a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.
The role of science is to be systematic, to be accurate, to be orderly, but it certainly is not to imply that the aggregated, successful hypotheses of the past have the kind of truth that goes into a number system.
It only takes a day to change someone from an anti-intellectual to an intellectual by persuading him that he might be one!
There's a tremendous popular fallacy which holds that significant research can be carried out by trying things. Actually it is easy to show that in general no significant problem can be solved empirically, except for accidents so rare as to be statistically unimportant. One of my jests is to say that we work empirically -- we use bull's eye empiricism. We try everything, but we try the right thing first!
Don't do anything that someone else can do.
One of the best ways to keep a great secret is to shout it.
In this country, there is an opportunity for the development of man's intellectual, cultural, and spiritual potentialities that has never existed before in the history of our species. I mean not simply an opportunity for greatness for a few, but an opportunity for greatness for the many.
...from this day forward until the day you are buried, do two things each day. First, master a difficult old insight, and second, add some new piece of knowledge to the world each day.
If you are able to state a problem - any problem - and if it is important enough, then the problem can be solved,
Colour is always a consequence, never a cause.
A premature attempt to explain something that thrills you will destroy your perceptivity rather than increase it, because your tendency will be to explain away rather than seek out.