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
Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.
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.
Work only on problems that are manifestly important and seem to be nearly impossible to solve. That way you will have a natural market for your product and no competition.
You think that the only thing that counts is the bottom line! What a presumptuous thing to say. The bottom line is in heaven.
The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.
True creativity is characterized by a succession of acts each dependent on the one before and suggesting the one after.
The present is the past biting into the future.
Any problem can be solved as long as it is stated properly.
Fifty years after we undertook to make the first synthetic polarizers we find them the essential layer in digital liquid-crystal. And thirty four years after we undertook to make the first instant camera and film, our kind of photography has become ubiquitous.
I believe that each young person is different from any other who has ever lived, as different as his fingerprints: that he could bring to the world a wonderful and special way of solving unsolved problems, that in his special way, he can be great.
As I visualize it, 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.
Do not do anything that anyone else can do readily.
If you dream of something worth doing and then simply go to work on it and don't think anything of personalities, or emotional conflicts, or of money, or of family distractions; it is amazing how quickly you get through those 5,000 steps.