Transcript
Introduction
"Polaroid as a company, was for 45 years, virtually synonymous with Edwin Land. He was its founder. He invented its first products and indeed many of its products and processes throughout the five decades of the company's history. His titles, during most of the period from 1937 to 1982, included Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Research. Although he cultivated a legend of privacy and inaccessibility to the press, he remained, far and away, the best-known member of the company. For many years, the only one familiar to the public.
He stayed aloof from the company's advertising so long as his friends and intimates told him Polaroid's advertising was good. The moment he suspected it was verging on the mediocre, he descended from Olympus, clothed in a mantle of righteousness. Since for many years, advertising was included among my marketing responsibilities at Polaroid. My relationship with Land was alternatively very close and moderately distant. I always felt comfortable speaking my mind to him. Many of his employees did not. He was revered, to an extraordinary extent, by most of the people who worked for him. Most men of Land’s stature, particularly those of whom great success has come in the business world, earn their share of distractors.
Land's were primarily outside the company, principally in the ranks of financial analysts and reporters. Land did not earn a college degree, yet he has received more medals and scientific honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science, than most living Americans. The full list of his honors runs to three pages. He holds 533 patents, second only to Thomas Edison's 1,093, and he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
I joined Polaroid in 1958 with little knowledge of the company, but with a sense that I was embarking on an adventure. I began in advertising and promotion. In 1980, I became Executive Vice President and was given responsibility for technical and industrial photography. In 1982, Land cut ties with his company and retired to devote full time to his laboratory and foundation. Two months later, I left Polaroid as well. The subject of this book is Polaroid and Land. The span is 1926 to 1982, the period when the company and the man were inseparable, virtually indistinguishable."
That was an excerpt from the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is Land’s Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It, and it was written by Peter Wensberg. This is now the fourth book that I've read about Edwin Land and I think it has the most unique perspective out of any other book that I've read so far because Peter worked directly with Edwin Land for over 20 years. So we get insights and perspectives that are not contained in the other book. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to listen to Founders #40, which is about the books, Insisting on the Impossible and Instant: The Story of Polaroid.