Edwin H. Land

American inventor and founder of the Polaroid Camera. He had 533 patents to his name, second only to Edison. Land's daughter was the inspiration for the Polaroid Camera, asking why she couldn't see the picture that he had just taken with his camera.

Brilliantly devised, he grasped the entire concept within an hour. Land started the company in 1935 and ran it until 1982 when it was reported to be a $1.4 billion business.

He had long since dropped out of Harvard, founded a successful corporation and had come up with scores of inventions when he took on the challenge of instant photography, just after World War II.

His mind had been compared to Einstein and Edison, a charismatic man with great physical presence. He was featured on the cover of Life magazine in 1946. Land's other inventions include Polaroid sunglasses, 3-D movies, wartime gun sights and guided missiles. He did basic research on vision and came up with important insights into how the brain perceives color.

Land died on 1 March 1991 at age 81 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.