Geschichte
polarisierende Linsen
Sofortbildkameras
Holographie
weitere Links
künstlerische Verwendung
1929 entwickelte EDWIN HERBERT LAND das erste synthetische polarisierende Material.
| Durch solche Scheiben wird Licht eigentlich nicht polarisiert, also so verbogen, daß es hinterher polarisiert ist, sondern nur gefiltert, d.h. nur dann durchgelassen, wenn es der Polarisierung der Scheiben entspricht. Deshalb kann man mit zwei Scheiben hintereinander Dunkelheit erzeugen: "Polaroid" bekam so seinen Namen. Die "Sun Lens Division" rühmt:
Polaroid linear and circular polarizers have been used in military goggles, on airplane windows, on cameras, copying machines, computer screens and of course, in sunglasses.
Today, millions of men and women around the world wear Polaroid polarizing sunglass lenses to eliminate glare, reduce eyestrain, and to see more clearly while fishing, boating, skiing, flying, biking, driving, or just walking around town. And with good reason. There's simply no better protection from the harmful rays of the sun. And no substitute for the original.
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Aber noch bekannter ist der Firmenname (zumindest älteren Menschen wie mir) durch Sofortbildkameras. Ende der 70er Jahre waren Polaroid-Kameras der am häufigsten verkaufte Kameratyp weltweit. Autofahrern und Gutachtern wurde geraten (oder sie kamen von selbst drauf), solche Kameras einzusetzen, weil das Ergebnis sofort überprüft werden konnte. Mein Vater hatte auch noch eine, aber wegen der hohen Kosten eines einzelnen Bildes ist sie selten benutzt worden.
Es war 1943, als die dreijährige JENNIFER LAND ihren Vater fragte, warum sie die gerade geknipsten Fotos nicht sofort sehen könne. Der Gedanke ließ EDWIN LAND keine Ruhe. Vier Jahre später präsentierte der Erfinder und Gründer der Polaroid Corp. die erste Sofortbildkamera der Welt. Das Prinzip ist genial einfach: EDWIN LAND baute der Kamera einfach eine Dunkelkammer ein.
Mit seiner Erfindung legte LAND den Grundstein für eine der erfolgreichsten Firmengeschichten der USA, sein Unternehmen sollte zum zweitgrößten Fotokonzern der Welt werden. Jetzt nahm die Geschichte allerdings ein unrühmliches Ende: die Polaroid Corp. ist zahlungsunfähig. Das ehemalige Vorzeige-Unternehmen steht mit knapp einer Milliarde US-Dollar in der Kreide.
NICHOLAS NEU
Wer rettet Polaroid? Der Traditonsbetrieb ist am Ende
Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten 21.10.2001
Die ersten sechs Kameras wurden handgemacht und sind noch erhalten:
One is housed at the Polaroid 20x24 Studio in NYC, the second is in a studio in Cambridge, MA., a third is in San Francisco at Calumet Photo, a forth is in Prague, CZ. with photographer JAN NIZDO, the fifth is at the Boston School of Fine Arts, and a sixth unused one is housed at the Roland Foundation in Boston, a research organization founded by the LAND family. There is also a processor only (no camera) from the now defunct Polaroid Replica Studio, being worked on to construct possibly more 20x24 systems.
Mit 533 Patenten stand LAND in den USA an zweiter (heute an sechster) Stelle hinter dem hierzulande viel bekannteren THOMAS ALVA EDISON. Im Gegensatz zu jenem beschränkte er sich aber auf ein Gebiet der Physik, die Optik. Prof. F.W. CAMPBELL hat eine Biographie über EDWIN HERBERT LAND begonnen, starb dann aber selbst, kurz bevor sie fertig geworden wäre. Dieser Text ist nun auf der Homepage des von LAND gegründeten Rowland Instituts abrufbar. Hier nur seine Zusammenfassung:
Dr. EDWIN H. LAND. 7 May 1909 - 1 March 1991
By F.W. CAMPBELL
Summary of Achievements
EDWIN H. LAND was distinguished for his inventions and contributions in the fields of polarized light, photography and colour vision. He has had an impact on the lives of many millions of people and has provided large-scale employment in many countries for over five decades. The Polaroid Corporation, which LAND founded, may continue to do so for many more. He mastered the art of giving the people what they wanted at a price they could afford. He has had few peers in the advancement and application of natural science to everyday life. LAND’s achievements spanned the disciplines of art, science, technology and commerce.
In the field of polarized light, he was responsible for the invention, development and efficient commercial production of the first sheet polarizers, for a sequence of subsequent polarizers, and for the theory and practice of many applications of polarized light. Such devices are widely used today in liquid crystal displays (LCD), in sunglasses and in scientific and medical research. The trade name ‘Polaroid’ has become the accepted generic name for these sheets.
In the field of photography, LAND developed the cameras and associated special films that produce almost instantaneous dry pictures directly from the camera. He mastered the complex physicochemical science that gave neutral or coloured, continuous-tone, instantaneous photographs. All of this required a team of first-class scientists and technicians that he led with great success. Novel equipment, using these colour systems, has also been widely exploited, including versions where the colour photograph develops in daylight.
Das MIT würdigte LAND in der Reihe "Inventor of the week".
LAND created a system of one-step photography (first demonstrated at a meeting of the Optical Society of America in February 1947). Land used the principle of diffusion transfer to reproduce the image recorded by the camera's lens directly onto a photosensitive surface---which now functioned as both film and photo. The Polaroid Land camera (patent #2,543,181) was first offered for sale on November 26th, 1948. Land continued to improve his invention: "Polacolor" film made instant color photos possible in 1963; in 1972, the "SX-70" replaced the wet, peel-apart development process with dry films that developed in light.
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Seit einiger Zeit sieht es aus, als sei das Wertvollste an Polaroid das Firmenarchiv:
Fifteen hundred cameras, 800 prototypes, and 60 years' worth of company documents occupy an oversize storage room in Building W3 of Polaroid's film manufacturing plant in Waltham, Massachusetts. The room also holds an aura of magic. The row after row of vintage Polaroids, those unpromising flat boxes that spring open like an accordion, recalls the fascination first felt when you pushed the button and waited for more than 3,000 chemical reactions to produce a photograph - your déjà vu on film. This is Polaroid's archive - a repository of the company's achievements, from its founding in 1937 through its seemingly endless highs and into its impossible lows.
Inside the archive, DAVE LAITURI, Polaroid's director of industrial design, and NASRIN ROHANI, the consulting archivist, are going through cabinets.
Polaroid's Five-Year Plan
By JESSIE SCANLON
Eine um Vollständigkeit bemühte Liste von Cameras und Filmen führt The Land List
Auch bei der Entwicklung der Holographie spielte Polaroid eine Rolle:
Holography dates from 1947, when British/Hungarian scientist DENNIS GABOR developed the theory of holography while working to improve the resolution of an electron microscope. GABOR, who characterized his work as "an experiment in serendipity," coined the term hologram from the Greek words holos, meaning "whole," and gramma, meaning "message." Further development in the field was stymied during the next decade because light sources available at the time were not truly "coherent" (monochromatic or one-color, from a single point, and of a single wavelength)...
Another major advance in display holography occurred in 1968 when Dr. STEPHEN A. BENTON invented white-light transmission holography while researching holographic television at Polaroid Research Laboratories. This type of hologram can be viewed in ordinary white light creating a "rainbow" image from the seven colors which make up white light. The depth and brilliance of the image and its rainbow spectrum soon attracted artists who adapted this technique to their work and brought holography further into public awareness.
Another method for the mass-production of holograms -- the photo polymer -- was developed by The Polaroid Corporation. Unlike "embossed" holograms (which are, in fact, transmission holograms with a mirror backing), the photo polymer hologram is a reflection hologram that can be viewed in normal room ambient light. The Mirage hologram has been used successfully in advertising, direct mail, product packaging and point-of-sale displays.
History, © 1997 Holophile, Inc.
Künstler wie ANDY WARHOL haben die Sofortbildkamera für ihre Werke eingesetzt.
Dem widmet sich die anscheinend deutsche Firma Polaroid Art mit ihrer weitgehend englischsprachigen Homepage.
http://www.pola-art.de/Startbild1-50a.jpg
Das Startbild
Der Guardian berichtete am 22.10.2001:
Gone in a flash
It was cheap, quick and democratic - and captured the hearts of some of the most inventive artists of the past three decades. JONATHAN JONES mourns the death of the Polaroid
Monday October 22, 2001
But Polaroid will never quite be forgotten. As well as being a hugely popular method of personal photography, it was also a favoured medium among some of the most inventive artists of the last three decades. ANDY WARHOL, DAVID GOCKNEY, WILLIAM WEGMAN, CHUCK CLOSE, LUCAS SAMARAS and MARIE COSINDRAS are some of the artists who have loved this idiosyncratic photographic process. And the Polaroid company loved them back, so their work has been carefully catalogued. Since the late 1960s, the company has built up the official Polaroid Collection of art, which now comprises some 20,000 works, housed in archives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lausanne and at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Dr EDWIN H. LAND ... also realised that artists could give his invention legitimacy and class.
LAND understood that photography in America was taken seriously as an art - the Museum of Modern Art in New York had begun collecting photographs in 1930 - and that he could establish his method as more than a curiosity, By enlisting one of the most revered American practitioners, he could get it accepted as "real" photography, and so invited the great landscape photographer ANSEL ADAMS to experiment with various types of Polaroid film.
ADAMS is celebrated for his sublime black-and-white pictures of America's national parks. He represents the highest, purest notion of art photography - the absolute opposite of the flash-in-the-pan, cheap instantaneity that the name Polaroid suggests to most of us. His photograph of a silvery, snow-covered peak in the Yosemite wilderness taken with Polaroid Land Film Type 42 in 1955 is not radically distinct from his other photographs; what it does is demonstrate the potential beauty of a Polaroid. Classy, artistic, beautiful, and just as serious as conventional photography - these are the signs the company liked its artists to send out.
... When ANDY WARHOL got his Polaroid camera, he used it to snap thousands of genitals. "Whenever somebody came to the Factory, no matter how straight-looking he was, I'd ask him to take his pants off so I could photograph his cock and balls. It was surprising who'd let me and who wouldn't." He carried his Polaroid camera everywhere in the 1970s and 80s, snapping away at Studio 54 and every Manhattan social event. WARHOL's dashingly painted society portraits of the 1970s were made from Polaroids that he took himself, often within seconds of persuading a celebrity to pose for him.
Auch auf andere Künstler geht der Guardian noch ein, aber das könnt Ihr dort selbst nachlesen.
Eine Methode wurde zufällig von LAND-Mitarbeitern entdeckt, als ein Foto beim sich Entwickeln auf der Bildseite lag. Dabei kann es zu Abdrücken (image transfer) kommen. HOLLY F. DUPRÉ hat darüber ein Buch geschrieben, daß im PDF-Format online ist: Polaroid Image Transfers.
