On February 21, 1947, Edwin Land demonstrated an instant camera and associated film. Called the Land Camera, it was in commercial sale less than two years later. Land’s company Polaroid originally manufactured sixty units of this first camera. Fifty-seven were put up for sale at Boston’s Jordan Marsh department store before the 1948 Christmas holiday. All fifty-seven cameras and all of the film were sold on the first day of demonstrations, greatly surpassing the company’s expectations.
Historians as well as those of us from an older generation will remember Polaroid as a member of the “Nifty Fifty” – a grouping of Dow Jones stocks that sported hefty multiples and, at one point in the ‘70s, the company’s stock sold for more than 90 times earnings (you can see an Economist article on this here). As you may know, the story doesn’t end happily as the original Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and, like its one-time rival, the also-bankrupt Eastman Kodak (as reported in The New York Times here), a victim of the rise of digital photography.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The Spirit of American Innovation – Dead or Alive? Passage of the JOBS Act Is a Step in the Right Direction for Revival | Makovsky + Company
