The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

Edwin Land > Irish Times, 27 January 2012

A young Edwin Land demonstrating one of the first Polaroid peels, AP photo, Irish Times.

I had never seen this photo before. It's not the way one peeled a photo from East to West, but rather from South to North. At least that's the way most of us did it, but this was a photo op and I have the feeling that Dr. Land was doing his best to cooperate on the spur of the moment for some welcome publicity.

Davin O'Dwer's article in the Irish Times is one of the best I've read in a long time. Please click on the link and see for yourself. I think Land's two sentences below, quoted from a 1975 Forbes magazine article, go a long way in explaining the profound impact Polaroid photography has had on the world.

“Over the years, I have learned that every significant invention has several characteristics. By definition it must be startling, unexpected, and must come into a world that is not prepared for it. If the world were prepared for it, it would not be much of an invention.” 

Kodak -- More

Paul Giambarba, Ruth, Nantucket, Figurehead, 1954

Captured with an ancient pre-World War II Contax I with 50mm Zeiss Jena lens (see below) on Kodachrome, one of the best films ever made. Unlike Ektachrome, it did not fade in over half a century. 

Here's more about the ongoing Kodak saga. 

"So the question that Kodak's demise raises in my mind is this: would any of us have done any better in 1976 after our R&D guys had come up with an idea that would cannibalise our core business and reduce our margins to near zero? And as I wrote that I came on a lecture by Rebecca Henderson of MIT in which she imagined what a Kodak executive might have said to the developer of the first digital camera:

'I see. You're suggesting that we invest millions of dollars in a market that may or may not exist but that is certainly smaller than our existing market, to develop a product that customers may or may not want, using a business model that will almost certainly give us lower margins than our existing product lines. You're warning us that we'll run into serious organisational problems as we make this investment, and our current business is screaming for resources. Tell me again just why we should make this investment?'

"Good question. And here's the really nice touch. From 1998 to 2009, Ms Henderson was the Eastman Kodak professor in MIT's management school."

From today's CBS News article, Why Kodak failed -- and how to avoid the same fate, by Dave Johnson.

And, an Associated Press piece by Ben Dobbin in yesterday's Detroit Free Press.