Image By Roberto Hoyos (http://throwboy.com/images/icons/Polaroid_fd01.png) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.
It’s no secret American’s are obsessed with their “things”, we invented hoarding. In fact, if you ask Donald Trump, he’ll tell you we invented “things” themselves. Most Americans will also agree that there are certain “things” that are more “Uh-mare-kun” than others; like Coca Cola, Levis, Elvis, Apple Pie and baseball (but don’t mean to blow your blimp-those last two are really adaptations of other nations traditions). Nothing is (capital t) Truly more American than the starving artist. No, is that Parisian? Okay, nothing is more American than the dejected, rejected (aka self-employed middle class) ‘creator’ of anything. Creating is hard in this country. And while I particularly love salmon, I am sick of the thought of all this fighting upstream is just to end up where I started and die.
No, persistence doesn’t always “pay off” in cash, but it is the key to happiness, especially if you are a creator of something you believe in. As hokey as it sounds, I do believe the statement from a Paul Coelho book that said (paraphrasing) ‘When you truly desire something, the whole universe desires to give it to you,’-yeah, I believe that sappy statement. You can stop reading now if you’re afraid this is about positivity, but know now, it’s not. It’s really about a photo I found.
Drop your selfie stick & Do the Polaroid Pose
Americans like a pithy saying just as much as an iconic thing a ma jig, in fact, if you ask Donald Trump, he’ll tell you, we invented jargon, or ‘buzzwords’, right? He might have been credited for inventing culture. He read that in a viral Op-Ed BuzzFeed piece (not true-as far as I can find). I like the classics. The old sayings that make the younger generation scratch their head. Not lower their head in disgust, like west coasters and ‘Hella’ or ‘Sick’, which are both demented and dumb. I’m talking about having a “hitch in the giddy” or more recent, how about “Kodak moment”?
Image By Junkyard kahrs at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], SX70, taken 9/2007 via Wikimedia Commons.
And for the life of me I cannot find a Kodak amongst my old photos (millennials-these were physical photographs printed at a Photo Lab, not stored in the cloud and came with ‘negatives’ for re-printing), but I recently came across a really bad Polaroid. That is what prompted this whole piece. Polaroids persists, but who moments fade, or evaporate. This particular Polaroid is of myself, my mother and step-father standing together in my grandparents driveway and dates back to 3-31-91 (scrawled on the back of the white border in my mother’s hand printing). It is a terrible picture! It is not even faded. I considered tossing it, but I know it would survive the trip to the dump and re-surface somewhere sometime. I could burn it, but I chose to show it to my daughter who is the same age I was in the photo. It made her feel better about her own appearance. I am a rung on the generational ladder, here to boost her higher. And yet, there is a silver lining. Not on the actual picture but in what you are about to discover. Rather than resisting the eerie immortality of the Polaroid picture, I did some research, and discovered, much to Donald Trumps dismay, 3-D movie technology (close to Super8 mm filming called PolaVision-which ultimately failed) was actually invented in 1939 by Edwin H. Land and George Wheelright, III, the founding partners of Land-Wheelright Laboratories who invented the Polaroid camera that first sold in 1948 for $89.95. Ironically one of the newest Polaroid models sells for around the same price. The Polaroid is an Ah-mare-(yes)-i-can" invention!
Image By Daderot [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, from MIT museum taken 8/2013.
First you should know that this dynamic duo was a master and apprentice team, and that the latter had a hard time doing his homework for the former. Apparently this is also the “American Way”, like Zuckerberg (degree still TBD), Land did not receive his (honorary) degree until 1957 after his important government work on the Lockheed U-2 spy plane on board imaging technology. Wheelright (III) was Lands professor in Physics at Harvard. In 1928 it was Land that filed the first patent for a synthetic polarizer. Work in the Labs gave rise to military technology, as customary in the US of A. First dibs (on use and application) always goes to the brass, but I’m certain that is also where much of the research funding came from as well, considering the time frame. By the end of the thirties Land Wheelright had invented and distributed ski goggles, 3-D glass and dark adapter goggles for both the Army and Navy.
Image above By Piercetheorganist at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Image below By User:Retro00064 (en:File:Polaroid logo.svg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
The Polaroids that those of us remember were big and clunky like ‘cell phones’ of yore, some of which required a heavy briefcase to even be ‘portable’. Ok, the Polaroids weren’t that bad, they were more like flip-phones, a first gen product which officially debuted in 1963 with Polacolor or instant film, the real claim to fame. Prior to Polaroids, now this is going to require a leap of faith if you are young, there was no way to ‘see’ the picture you took until days, months later-and often there were a bunch of garbage photos. Such a lumbering waste! Nowadays we just delete immediately, they never even get a chance to get lost in the cloud(s). Polaroids were the first smarter cameras and yet Kodak gets a slogan that sticks?
According to American advertising royalty, Coca-Cola, branding should be reflective of the product and ‘Pure as sunlight’ (slogan circa 1927).
Image By Coca-Cola, 19th-century advert 1888 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons-
claims to be the first coupon ever, now that's American!
They say all artists are only famous post-mortem-or that in order to be a decent artist you must act the role of outcast..or you could be OutKast, (the band) and popularize the Polaroid in the widely known (viral) song “Hey Ya! ”, (which thankfully wasn’t ‘Hella Totally’). It too will be forgotten, so will shaking it, just like my favorite hitches in the giddies, it will sound like a jalopy from ye olden times, the starting of the portable-tech era, which was way back forever ago, technically.
It figures, another forgotten American icon recycled together with Pop culture, which is such a fitting buzzword, if you know how corrosive (soda) pop is. It is also likely that Land had other brilliant ideas stashed away in some of the notes he had destroyed after his death at the age of 81 in March 1991. What do you know- the date of my photo and the day Edwin Land died match. Now that is something that is difficult to shake.
If a picture says a thousand words, this persnickety polaroid had more to say other than- “Remember that day…”, I think it said something about inventing (in) America, not as they say, American Invention(s).
Image of Edwin Land via http://quotesgram.com/edwin-land-quotes-school.
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