Episode Details

What I learned from rereading Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg.

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[0:01] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it’s run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn’t believe anything until he’s discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That’s why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.

[1:33] More books on Edwin Land: 

Insisting on The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny 

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker 

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein 

Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Chris Bonanos 

[2:18] “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” —  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214)

[5:17] This guy started one of the great technology monopolies and ran it for 50 years.

[7:35] He lived his life more intensely than the rest of us.

[8:53] His interest in our reactions was minimal — polite, sometimes kind, but limited by the great drain of energy necessary to sustain his own part.

[9:30] He never argued his ideas. If people didn’t believe in them, he ignored those people. —A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman  (Founders #95) 

Loomis was not someone you could argue with. He would listen patiently to an opposing opinion. But his consideration was nothing more than that-an act of politeness on his part.” — Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant (Founders #143)

[11:40] Right before he introduces the most important product he ever makes — he is in a fight for his life. There's a good chance that Polaroid is going to be bankrupt.

[14:29] The parallel to Steve Jobs is striking. Edwin Land —like jobs — had to turn around the company he founded before they ran out of money!

[15:02] At 37 he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success.

[15:32] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

[22:48] The heroes of your heroes become your heroes.

[23:39] Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was —and left disappointed. —Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[27:22] The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for, from time to time, one of them does. — Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Founders #261)

[29:30] He conc