3-D Bonanza

In 1940, when Polaroid Corp. got an order for 2,000,000 special eyeglasses for a world's fair exhibit, Polaroid's President Edwin Herbert Land predicted: "The lenses will be used [to view] a three-dimensional Technicolor movie . . . This new movie in Technicolor is believed to be a forerunner of unusual developments in the art of motion-picture production."

By last week, Land's tentative prediction had come true in a way that exceeded even his wildest fancy. In Hollywood's rush to make three-dimensional epics (TIME, Feb. 16), Polaroid is the indispensable company; it is the only maker of the Polaroid glasses needed to view pictures-in-depth.*

Since December, Polaroid has expanded production from 100,000 to 12 million pairs a month, but it still cannot fill the demand--at 10-c- apiece to exhibitors. United Artists alone has ordered 19 million pairs, and Warner Bros, and Columbia want 20 million for April delivery. But the best angle for Polaroid is that the glasses are used only once (for sanitary reasons). Headlined Variety: BEAUCOUP BLACK INK FOR POLAROID.

Polaroid expects more black ink from another invention it is readying for 3-D: a radical new system of three-dimensional photography called Vectograph. Now, it is necessary to photograph two pictures of the same scene on different reels (one as seen by the right eye and the other by the left), and project them from separate machines so that they merge into one picture. In the Vectograph system, now in the final stages of development, one camera takes two images on a single frame of film, and projects them by a single machine. With Vectograph, Land expects that any theater can show 3-D movies with no more equipment--or operating expense--than present pictures.

One-Way Passage. Polaroid's 3-D bonanza is only a wider opening in a vein it has been profitably mining for years. The phenomenon of polarized light has been a scientific curiosity for at least two centuries, but Land, as a teen-age youngster experimenting in his home laboratory, was the first to find a way to exploit it. He impregnated plastic with tiny needle-like crystals that allowed only light waves vibrating in a single plane to pass through. As a physics student at Harvard, Land perfected the idea, and left before graduation to found his own company.

From its beginning in 1932, Polaroid's bread & butter was photographic equipment and sunglasses. Soon he was making other glare-free devices--binoculars, desk lamps and railroad-car windows. Later, he brought out the phenomenally successful Polaroid Land Camera (TIME, May 30, 1949), which prints pictures within a minute after they are snapped. Last year, on sales of $13,400,000, up 45% in a year, Polaroid netted $597,000.

On the Up & Up. Besides the Vectograph, Land still has a fistful of other new products about ready for the market. Among them: a new camera film so sensitive that it will take pictures by candlelight, and a quick-developing film for the Polaroid Land Camera that will take pictures in full color. Only last month Polaroid began shipping to commercial users an X-ray film that can be developed in one minute. It is already in wide use in Korea. With these, plus his glasses, Land thinks that Polaroid this year will once again boost sales 45%.

*Other 3-D effects, such as Cinerama (TIME, Oct. 13, 1952) and Cinemascope (TIME, Feb. 9), do not require glasses since they create an illusion of depth with wide, curving screens instead of true stereoscopic projection, using polarized light (TIME, Dec. 15, 1952).

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