Pictures in a Minute

Nobody but nobody was biting its nails like Gimbels. The Polaroid Land camera, which takes and prints a finished picture in one minute, was about to go on sale in Manhattan, and R. H. Macy & Co. had wangled a month's exclusive department-store rights. At its wit's end, Gimbels stealthily bought up a stock of the cameras from out-of-town stores where Polaroid was running test sales, and put in a classy window display. But as soon as Gimbels put the cameras on sale (at $89.75), Macy's sent a flying squad of shoppers across the street and bought out most of Gimbels' stock. As Gimbels hastily took out its window display, Macy's plugged the camera in big ads.

The two behemoths were not fighting over peanuts. Last week, the first week of big city sales, some 4,000 cameras were sold in the Manhattan area alone. Though Polaroid was making 10,000 cameras a month, it was forced to ration them, as well as its special film, to retail outlets. For the first time since the war, Polaroid expected to make a profit this year.

Dr. Edwin H. Land, 40, Polaroid's black haired, bright-eyed president, could thank his ten-year-old daughter Jennifer for the idea for his new camera. Several years ago, when he took a snapshot of Jeffie, she demanded to know why she couldn't have a print right away. That got him thinking about a camera that would have a "built-in darkroom" (TIME, March 3, 1947), and he developed one that printed 3 by 5 photos. that were simply peeled off the negative.

The camera is one of a long line of bright ideas which have won Dr. Land's company a fine scientific reputation, but little in the way of profits except in the war years, when it made optical equipment. Land first got interested in optics as a science student at Harvard; he formed Polaroid in 1937 to market his first notable discovery, Polaroid plastic. (It filtered light rays in such a way that the glare was removed.)

In his busy laboratory, Dr. Land developed Polaroid lenses and sunglasses, three-dimensional movies in natural color (not yet ready to market), and a system of Polaroid automobile headlights and visors for glareless night driving. But since the superbrilliant lights used in the Polaroid system would require equipping all the 33,225,000 cars on the road at the same time, the system made little headway. Nevertheless, with such new products as the camera and filter screens for television sets, Polaroid is finally in the black and hopes to stay there.

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