EDWIN HERBERT LAND

FEW men have merged the worlds of business and science with greater success than Edwin Herbert Land, a scholarly New Englander who completely changed photography with his Polaroid Land Camera, which now turns out a finished picture in ten seconds -- an invention that skeptics once derided as a passing plaything.

Trim and darkly handsome, "Din" Land, 51, has built his Polaroid Corp. into a company that employs 2,500, had 1960 sales of $99.4 million, and has given him and his family a paper fortune of more than $143 million. But Land has never let money, success or corporate detail interfere with his first love: the joy of discovery.

This week Polaroid announced another of the new develop ments that have made it Wall Street's darling (its stock went from 96 1/4 in January 1959 to 261 last year, is now 189) and one of the photography industry's fastest growing companies.

For conventional 4x5 cameras that use a special Polaroid attachment, the company has developed a film packet that produces both finished picture (see cut) and negative in 15 seconds. Next month Polaroid will announce a new film for its Land cameras, which will produce black and white slides in only ten seconds. Under development is a one-step color film that shows promise of being the company's next big success.

Over his fast-developing company Land presides like a physics professor engaged with his students in a great adventure. New products at Polaroid are never developed because of market research or questionnaires to customers. "Industry must have an insight," says Land, "into what are the deep needs of people that they don't know they have." Land did not conceive his camera purely as a hot commercial product, felt that a simple, one-step camera could be "a new medium of expression" for people with artistic leanings who do not draw, sculpt or paint.

DISCOVERIES, says Land, are made "by some individual who has freed himself from a way of thinking that is held by friends and associates who may be more intelligent, better educated, better disciplined, but who have not mastered the art of the fresh, clean look at the old, old knowledge." To challenge his employees to take a fresh look, Land gives them an individual freedom rare in industry. He offers them special courses in everything from chemistry to photography, often switches production workers to research or engineering projects to forestall boredom and encourage new interests. He encourages his scientists to pursue pure-research projects on their own at least part of the time. Land's aim is "the ideal company" in which "the working life is so deeply satisfying, so richly rewarding that leisure becomes relaxation rather than escape." Land himself spends much of his time in his laboratory in the company's Cambridge, Mass., headquarters. He devotes about half his time to research (he holds more than 200 U.S. patents), often works in the lab for days and nights on end when a project is at its vital stage. He is busy working on research into color vision, to which he has already made outstanding contributions, and he takes personal responsibility for the company's black-and-white film developments.

Though the name Land is quickly recognized by camera fans, little else has been known about him, since he has tenaciously guarded his private life from view. He and his wife (he has two daughters, both at college) live in a big and ancient house on Brattle Street in Cambridge, have a summer place in New Hampshire. Land likes to relax with his large hi-fi collection, occasionally plays tennis, is a fast and retentive reader.

OUTSIDE of work, most of Land's interests lie in the field of education. He is a member of three visiting committees at Harvard (astronomy, chemistry and physics), is an "institute professor" at M.I.T. and a fellow at M.I.T.'s School for Advanced Study. He has six honorary doctorates, is a past president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Land was an adviser to the Physical Science Study Committee that created a radically different physics course for high schools, has argued for student participation in original scientific research in college, and even in high school.

Land himself never got a college degree. While a freshman at Harvard, he got the inspiration for the first practical material to polarize light (a transparent plastic sheet), left school for three years to perfect it. When he returned. Harvard gave him a laboratory to work in, but restless Din Land passed up a degree, left school to make his polarizers and carry on research. His chief aim was to sell Detroit on a system of polarized auto windshields and headlight lenses that would take the glare out of night driving. The industry never accepted the idea, but Land has not yet abandoned hope.

In 1937, Land founded Polaroid Corp., ran its sales up to $1,000,000 by 1941 by selling lenses for sunglasses, filters and other polarized products. The company produced lenses and gun sights for the military during World War II, while Land worked on his camera in his spare time; he got the idea when his young daughter impatiently waited to see pictures Land had just taken. By 1948, Polaroid was showing a net loss of $865,256, but the camera was ready.

Since then, Polaroid's story has been one of unrelieved success. With its new products, Polaroid has been growing at an average rate of about 30% a year in recent years. Its camera has become known the world over, has even been copied by the Russians--who did not, however, claim that they invented it.

Land believes that recessions, such as the present one, bring out a new kind of challenge for industry. "During prosperity," he says, "the challenge is simply to make worthwhile products and to keep yourself busy. But during depressions, the challenge is to create new fields to make work for people who need it.

That lets the scientist and the engineer feel that he is working for his country as well as for himself."

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