GLARE A THING OF THE PAST?

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 2, 31 January 1944, Page 21

GLARE A THING OF THE PAST?

Polaroid may become post-war commonplace From Salt Australian Army Education Journal

At harvard University, U.S.A., in 1929, there was a shock-hair piercing - eyed twenty - year - old student named Edwin Land. He was always remaining late after class for discussions with his physics instructor. Their discussions centred around a light polarizer that Land had conceived as a boy in a rough home laboratory. The instructor influenced the University authorities to set Land up in a special laboratory.

Land didn’t take the trouble to graduate from the University. With Land’s polarizer as a basis, the two men set out to manufacture a cellophanelike substance which they called polaroid. There are clear signs that, after the war, polaroid is going to play a considerable part in our daily lives. Polaroid eliminates glare and thus intensifies colour. This has brought about the greatest. advance in the improvement of human sight since the invention of spectacles. To-day it is used not only in those sun-glasses which are so hard to obtain, but also in microscopes, telescopes, and other optical instruments, in reading-lamps, in X-rays, in cameras, as windows in motor headlights, and in three-dimensional movies. This substance is manufactured in sheets three-thousandths of an inch in thickness. It is both flexible and transparent. Composed of needle-like crystals (several thousand billions to the square inch), its peculiar quality is due to the fact that all the crystals lie parallel. Polaroid polarizes light waves —that is, it gives them a definite direction as they sieve through it. Normal light hits the eye from every direction. In passing through the polaroid crystals the light ray is broken up. The effect the parallel crystals of polaroid have on light which passes through them may be more clearly understood by picturing a ray of light as a round metal

bar and the polaroid sheet as a slot that flattens the bar into a ribbon when the bar is drawn through.

The effect of the process is amazing to the layman. Looking through a sheet of polaroid you see a new world. The every-day milk-bottle through polaroid will be ringed with rainbow-coloured stripes where the glass has been improperly annealed. A few caffein crystals through a polaroided microscope will look like a hothouse flower garden. Polaroid reveals defects in silk stockings or sausage-skins. It enables jewellers to tell the good stone from the artificial at a glance. Your skin takes on new colour and texture makes the softest skin resemble a rugged part of the Owen Stanleys.

After the war no deep-sea fisherman will be complete without a pair of polaroid spectacles. They eliminate blinding glare from the surface and allow the eye to see deeply into water. Cameras equipped with polaroid can photograph a submerged submarine. It enables airmen to see the enemy plane hiding in the sun.

One of the most widespread future uses for polaroid will be in diminishing the glare of motor-car headlights. In proportion to mileage, the death-rate in night driving is almost three times that of daylight driving. The majority of these accidents are due to bad head-

lighting. The headlight danger can be overcome by adjusting polaroid sheets over headlights and in front of the driver’s eyes. The lights come through only as two flat, luminous purple discs, but enough illumination is allowed so that, even behind the lamps, the details of the car’s hood and fenders, people in the front seat, and even the license plate, can be seen. There is no glare.

Polaroid technicians have produced experimental three-dimensional movies in colour. To achieve the full effect, the audience must wear polaroid spectacles. Should these experiments be successful, they should enormously popularize the use of these eye-saving spectacles.

As a substitute for window-glass, Polaroid may have a big future in postwar housing. Polaroid windows do not need shades or shutters. By sliding one sheet over another it is possible to control the amount of light passing through it— to block out light completely.

Polaroid is likely to make living easier in many ways—not only in those that are realized to-day, but in many more. Land and his associates have not allowed success to deter them from further research and experimentation. They, and others, are continually finding new uses for this unique substance.

The story of Land’s success is an unusual one in that, unlike most inventors,, he has maintained control of his invention and shared in a large part of the profits from it. Much of Polaroid Corporation’ssuccess is due to his recognition of the value of a large research staff. Every year a large part of the Corporation’s, profits are earmarked for experimentation. Land’s expert physicists and laboratory workers are continually investigating new uses for polarization, and are every year enlarging the demand for the new substance. Land and his carefully chosen associates have set an example to big business of what can be accomplished when inventive genius is closely allied to sound commercial planning.