Founders - #134 Edwin Land (Polaroid vs Kodak)

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

What I learned from reading A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein. ----Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here! ----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---[0:21] He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. He received virtually every distinction the scientific community has to offer, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership in the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on Life’s list of the 100 most important Americans of the twentieth century.  [1:35]  In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land’s life was a manifestation of the indefatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow. [2:15] Land has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company.  [2:34] Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve, pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs, pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution, and where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration—involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment, so that a large part of life’s rewards would come from this involvement.  [3:30] Steve Jobs was one of Land’s most dedicated fans: “Not only was [Land] one of the great inventors of our time,” said Jobs in a 1985 interview, “but, more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. . . . The man is a national treasure, I don’t understand why people like that can’t be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be—not an astronaut, not a football player—but this.” [5:22] Land’s relative anonymity can perhaps best be explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness, and his blinders-on mentality when it came to his life’s work.  [6:19] He sees himself as determined, iron-willed and hard driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand.  [6:31] The formula for accomplishment he practiced throughout his life—creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity followed by inexhaustible effort—remains a model that should inform and inspire us all, no matter the particular field of our endeavor.  [8:56] He strongly believed that concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Late in his career, Land recalled that his “whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had.” [16:24] A way to describe Edwin Land: “a state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present, a great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive achievement.”  [21:43] How to do something difficult: You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.  [24:34] Land had an extraordinary curiosity about everything and the discipline to satisfy it.  [28:14] Eisenhower wanted to know what the Russians were up to. Land told Eisenhower, “Well, why don’t we take a look and find out.”  [31:53] One of Land’s tenets: “If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on it’s just hard work.”  [45:13] Land on why he had to sue Kodak: This would be our obligation even if one-step photography were but one component of our business. Where it is our whole field and where we have dedicated our whole scientific and industrial career to bringing this previously non-existent field to full technological and commercial fruition, our manifest duty to our shareholders is vigorously to assert our patents.  [53:26] Kodak underestimated somebody you should never underestimate. [59:47] A summary of Land’s philosophy on building a technology company: Creation of a new technology requires that a single individual have in mind the objective to be reached. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others but the single dominant individual must constantly assure himself that the individual efforts complement one another and create support for an integrated system.  —“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast. ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

While Polaroid's products may have achieved an iconic status in our popular culture, their progenitor, Edwin Land, remains largely an unknown and underappreciated figure in our nation's technological history. This is somewhat surprising, as his accomplishments meet or surpass those of many better-known personalities. He died in 1991 with 535 patents to his credit, third in U.S. history. His honorary doctorate degrees, too numerous to list, come from the most distinguished academic institutions, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and membership into the prestigious Royal Society of London. Land was included on life's list of the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century. Beyond his contributions to photography, most people use his first invention,

the plastic sheet polarizer, just about every day, whether in sunglasses, camera filters, LCD displays, scientific and medical instruments, or car windshields. Perhaps most importantly, his contribution to America's defense and intelligence efforts over three decades and in service of seven presidents performed mostly in secret with no public fanfare, but to a high amount of praise from our country's scientific elite, may be the true measure of Land's stature and the pantheon of great American minds and entrepreneurs. In so many ways, on so many occasions, Land's life was a manifestation of the infatigable can-do attitude he embraced and encouraged others to follow.

He sought to build an organization in his own image, one that could pursue its dreams instinctively, unshackled by some of the restraints imposed both internally and externally upon other companies. In describing Polaroid, distinguished Harvard Business School professor Joseph L. Bauer once noted, to understand Polaroid, you must understand land. Land is creative, and he has the well-grounded suspicion that good, careful, systematic planning can kill a creative company. Instead, Land committed Polaroid on a course to pursue the same kind of ambitious challenges that he had set for himself when he was still a teenager.

There's a direct quote from Land now. Pick problems that are important and nearly impossible to solve. Pick problems that are the result of sensing deep and possibly unarticulated human needs. Pick problems that will draw on the diversity of human knowledge for their solution. And where that knowledge is inadequate, fill the gaps with basic scientific exploration. Involve all the members of the organization in the sense of adventure and accomplishment. So that a large part of life's rewards would come from this involvement. Land has left a special legacy in the world of business, one that would become a model for companies of the future. Not surprisingly, Steve Jobs was one of Land's most dedicated fans. In the words of John Sculley,

whom Jobs recruited to lead Apple in 1983, these were two geniuses who totally understood each other from the vantage point that they knew how to take technology and transform it into magic. Not only was Land one of the great inventors of our time, said Jobs in a 1985 interview, but more importantly, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models. This is the most incredible thing to be.

Not an astronaut, not a football player, but this. Early in his career, Jobs had the opportunity to visit with Land, who described to Jobs his vision for the technology company of the future. Jobs confessed to a reporter that getting to meet Land was like visiting a shrine. Many years later, Jobs admiring assured Land that in building Apple, he had tried to emulate the ideas Land had described to him. The influence that Land had on Jobs is readily apparent to anyone who is familiar with their respective careers. As one journalist noted, they were a pair of college dropouts with big ideas. Both were driven, demanding, and stubborn. Qualities that led them to great things. From the corporate culture Jobs created at Apple to his widely anticipated product introductions

at each Apple shareholder meeting, Jobs arguably became the Edwin Land of his generation. In 2010, when Jobs was previewing Apple's iPad for some journalists prior to its introduction, he was asked what consumer and market research had been conducted to inform Apple's development process. Jobs' reply was pure land, almost a verbatim reprise of comments Land had made many times throughout his career. None. It isn't the consumer's job to know what they want. For Land, as well as Jobs, entrepreneurial invention was the process of making what the consumer can't even imagine. To a large extent, Land's relative anonymity can perhaps best be explained by his inscrutable personality, his simple shyness, and his blinders-on mentality when it came to his life's work. Of course, despite his prodigious accomplishments and many inspirational and worthy traits, Edwin Land shared with the rest of us all the frailties

of the human experience. To the extent this book may seem like an homage to him, it is not meant to canonize him in total disregard of his shortcomings, notably his enormous ego and his unrelenting stubbornness. Land's vision of himself does not take into account the possible imbalance between his all-consuming work and his personal life, and it does not include the perspective of some employees who find him difficult, overly demanding, and miserly in direct praise. He sees himself as determined, iron-willed, and hard-driving, a man who will not rest until he has conquered whatever problem is at hand. Land passed away on March 1, 1991, yet his legacy endures. The formula for accomplishment that he practiced throughout his life,

creative wonderment and intellectual curiosity, followed by inexhaustible effort remains a model that should inform and inspire us all no matter the particular field of our endeavor that was an excerpt from the book that i want to talk to you about today which is a triumph of genius edwin land polaroid and the kodak patent war and it was it was written by Robert K. Fierstein. So there's a lot to get to. Let's go ahead and jump into it. I want to draw your attention to this one sentence that appears in the prologue of this book, and I think it's a great one-sentence summary about the personality of the truly unique person that Edwin Land was. And it says, as a colleague acknowledged

many years later, this man never had an ordinary reaction to anything. And before the author gets into the actual case, he gives us a lot. He did a lot of research. There's a lot of great background on the early life of Edwin Land that I haven't found in any other books. And then some some direct quotes and ideas from land that I just want to share with you. But I was reading this section and it made me realize how important books are to the human experience. If you really think about it,

books lay at the foundation of all religions, economic systems, political movements, but they also lay the foundation for many people's dreams. And Edwin Land was no different. And so we see his discovery as a young man of this one important book and the role it played in influencing the direction

of his life. So it says, Land was still a preteen when he began to read about optical science and discovered the textbook. The textbook's name is Physical Optics, written by Robert Wood. Robert Wood was a professor of physics at John Hopkins University, who was well known as an experimenter of great ingenuity in the areas of optics, light, electricity, and photography. Now, that's fascinating. That's how Robert Wood was described because that's how we could also describe Edwin Land. It says Land slept with Wood's book under his pillow and read it, direct quote from Land here, nightly in the way that our forefathers read the Bible.

It was an intellectual awakening that would shape his life. Edwin Land, of course, has a lot of great ideas, but I would say if you only had to select one, this may be the single most important idea to take away from the life and career of Edwin Land because it can be applied to so many different things. And it says, Land had learned early on that total engrossment was the best way for him to work. He strongly believed that this kind of concentrated focus could also produce extraordinary results for others. Land said, my whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring about in people resources they didn't know they had. So Edwin Land has a bit of a reputation as being kind of a recluse.

Somebody who's just completely immersed in research and science. But what's striking to me is when you read his writing, and then also I've read transcripts of speeches he gave. He was a masterful communicator as well. So in the section I'm about to read to you, he's talking about the compulsion that he experienced when he was figuring something out. And just listen to the language that he uses. He says, suddenly, a separateness that comes during the preoccupation with a particular scientific task. There is a need, a transient need, a violent need for being just yourself. Restating, recreating, talking in your own terms about what you have learned from all the cultures, scientific and non-scientific, before you and around you.

So I'm going to pause right there. I really love that idea. If you really think about what he's saying, he's telling us to remix all the things that we've learned into our own unique perspective. Continuing his description, you want to be almost alone with just a few friends. You want to be undisturbed. You want to be free to think, not for an hour at a time or three hours at a time, but for two days or two weeks without interruption. You don't want to drive the family car or you don't want to go to parties. You wish people would just go away and leave you alone while you get something straight. Then you get it straight and you embody it. And during that period of embodiment, you have a feeling of almost divine guidance.

Then it is done. And suddenly, you are not alone. You go back to your friends and the world around you, and to all of history, to be refreshed, to feel alive and human once again. It is this interplay between all that is richly human, and this special, concentrated, uninterrupted mental effort that seems to me to be the source, not only of science, but also of everything that is worthwhile in life. So he's got a beautiful way, a masterful way to communicate.

And the reason that's important, especially in this book, is because Edwin Land winds up being the single most important person in the trial, the trial, the patent trial between Kodak and Polaroid. We know how it ends. Polaroid wins and they win. And Kodak is found guilty of infringing on their patents because of the way Land is able to communicate. And he's communicating about something that he spent his entire life learning. And I'll get more to that later. The judge even said after she delivered her decision that she called Land an amazing witness. And he treated his testimony as a way to educate the judge, the person's also making that decision, about why Kodak infringed their patents and what their expert witnesses were actually misunderstanding. And so I'll go more detail in a little bit. But I want to stay on to a bunch of these ideas and these insights that Land has derived

throughout his entire career that this book highlights for us. And so this one was particularly fascinating. And it's Land talking about why does it take so long to learn so little? He ruminated about the nature of scientific investigation in terms that anyone could readily understand. It is a curious property of research activity that after a problem has been solved, the solution usually seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked on it for years. As they regard their finished work, they cannot help

but wonder why a simple, rational process that can be performed in a day took them, rational people, 10 years to develop. In research, as in the whole civilizing process, why does it take so long to learn so little? In this section, Land is talking about hiring, the hiring practices that he used at Polaroid, which he finds in the way to identify unique talent. So he says, Land employed a unique strategy for identifying good employment prospects. Quote from him, I don't care what the people know if they're willing to work hard and they consider it a pleasure to come here and work. When I meet someone for the first time, often I can tell right away whether they may be a potential scientist. In talking to this person, how much is he ahead of you? When you draw a

breath to say the next thing, does he know what you're going to say before you say it? Does he delight in the construction that you're making? Does he turn the conversation quite subtly because he perceives where it is going and wishes it to go somewhere else? Not all scientists are that alert. There are many scientists who, for all their marvelous training, are just plain dull. You sit with them and nothing is happening. They have been stultified somehow and the world is going by them. So let's do a little vocab word there.

I had to look up that word. And it says cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative, especially as a result of a tedious or restrictive routine. So really what he's talking about there is the unexpected benefits of being an interesting person. This is something we learned from reading the writings of Benjamin Franklin. He talks about why it was so important for him to dedicate all of his the money for his business, getting contracts and opportunities that he otherwise wouldn't have if he didn't take time to improve his mind, which then improves your conversation. So I really like that idea because Edwin Land's echoing a little bit of that there. It's like you may be a brilliant scientist, but you can't communicate with other humans means you can't work with them. What's interesting, I want to fast forward in the timeline a little bit.

I found this very fascinating. So Land is just 30 years old when he wins an award for being one of the modern pioneers of the frontiers of industry by the National Association of Manufacturers. And what I found so interesting about this is, well, let me back up for a second. The other people sharing the award that night, Wilbur Wright of the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford and Charles Kettering, which is all the more amazing that were winning this award um really just gives you an insight into the attributes that that he had and that was obvious to people around him right so it says in making the presentations uh they described edwin land to a t uh as they articulated the essential attributes of the pioneers being honored that night so this is this goes not just with edwin land but everybody else but it gives you an insight to him. And this is some of the attributes,

which I find something to aspire to. A state of mind that includes curiosity, an idealism which is dissatisfied with the restrictions and imperfections of the present. That's a great sentence. A great inward urge for discovery and an ability to translate this dissatisfaction and inward urge into constructive

achievement. As I've talked about on past podcasts, I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but Land was influential on developing technology to help win World War II. And I want to read this section because again, I think it's an illustration of how what a masterful communicator was. Listen to how he's going to describe Nazism at the end of the section here. So says Roosevelt, that's obviously President Roosevelt, hope to keep America out of another European war. Land, however, was certain from the start that American involvement was inevitable. So he starts transitioning Polaroid from a consumer company to one developing technology for the war before the United. He thought it was so inevitable that he did this job before the United States declared war.

Land told his employees that he believed the war was going on in Europe was of much greater significance to the United States than most people felt. Land predicted that the United States would be in the war within the next year. As a result, he decided to make a big change in Polaroid's focus. From that moment on, the company would devote itself to one sole purpose, to win this war. In his talk to Polaroid's employees and in future comments, Land made it clear that he was not motivated by the chance to profit from the war effort. Now, there's some other cases. I've covered a lot of founders that have made a lot of money around World War II.

And I would find that statement for a lot of them to be rather dubious. I don't doubt the truthfulness of that statement based on what I know about Edwin Land. His motivation instead, this is where I talk about what a great communicator he was. His motivation instead was to combat, this is how he's describing Nazism now, this disease that is spreading over the world. One that goes on for generations and does not stop when the war stops. More in his communication, Land was not afraid of using superlatives, especially when talking about his own products. Remember, at the very beginning, the author says, listen, we're not meant to put him up on a pedestal.

He had faults. He had a gigantic ego. And you kind of see that in the way he talks about his own products, which I find humorous. Polaroid produced millions of what Land proudly called the best damn goggles in the world. None other than General George S. Patton appeared on the cover of Newsweek outfitted in a pair. They made millions of them for the Allies. This is a little bit about Lance. I'm going to talk more about what he did in the war, too. But in this section, he talks about management, which I think he has a very unique approach to management that may be useful in other domains.

So it says, Lance had a penchant for bringing a variety of eclectic and unorthodox thinkers to Polaroid, giving them the basic equipment they needed for their research without much fretting about the short-term payoff and just turning them loose for long periods of time so it's a very essentially what he's doing for his employees he he wants for himself right he wants long uninterrupted that he wants to have all the resources he needs to complete the job but he then once he has those resources he wants to be left alone for long periods of time so he can actually get the job done land generally left them alone waiting for them to call him or calling them in when he had a short-term project that needed their special skills this provided fertile ground for new ideas that might come to the fore and not only that i think it's a competitive advantage for polaroid that polaroid enjoyed

was the fact that how many other companies could do this and they were discovering ideas through in some cases there was uh when they were trying to figure out how to make instant color film. The person he put in charge of it sat around thinking for two years before he actually began. So again, there's an advantage in doing things that other people aren't doing that I think Polaroid reaped. Just basic advice, go direct to your customer. Edwin Land learned that the hard way by developing technologies for other industries so they could use it in their products for customers. And after nearly two decades of doing this, like, screw this, I'm not, this is ridiculous. So he says, after more than two decades, Land reluctantly gave up the fight,

but he learned one very important lesson. I knew then I would never go into a commercial field that put a barrier between us and the customer. Rather than deal with other companies as intermediaries, he would market his innovative products directly to the public. So that marks a huge change in the history of Polaroid. Lan has another good idea on how to start something difficult and important. And this is fantastic. I love this idea. So you have a goal.

You have something you want to accomplish in mind. He's saying at the very start, work backwards almost. Right. Think about what is the perfect realization a button and then you don't have to do anything else the picture comes out and in about a minute you see it right uh when they were meeting in that famous meeting between edwin lane and steve jobs steve jobs said said the same thing like and at the time he wasn't developing uh the iphone but he talked about uh developing the mac and realizing what everything he thought a computer should be and working backwards from that so he says you always start with a fantasy part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect then with the experiments you work back from that fantasy to reality hacking away at the components so it's telling us to work backwards something another thing he says is really it made me chuckle when I read it.

So he talks about, he's like, why don't businesses set up to be like experiments? Because he's like, listen, in this section I'm about to read to you, the way I would interpret it is everyone understands the necessity of trial and error, right? We all get that. It's how you derive a lot of things that are, the world is so complex, you really can't predict what's going to happen in the future. So you have to trial and error your way through there. He goes, but many people don't like the error part. As if you could separate the trial from the error, you just can't do it. So again, summary of this section, businesses should be set up as experiments. I really love this idea. He says, one of Land's great strengths as a scientist was his understanding that to research necessarily meant to endure without discouragement. the error part of the trial and error axiom as he put it

an essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail scientists pursue a great invention by calling their activities hypothesis and experiments and make it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they get the results they want so logical conclusion that's like why aren't we setting up businesses like that um something i i discovered i don't know what founders it was uh it's it's on i talk about this all the time kio morita the one of the founders of sony had one of the greatest ideas i've ever come across i don't understand why more people don't do this he hired a paid critic to make sony's products better that paid critic a few decades later was of being the president of Sony. Somebody that cared deeply about the products

so much that when they were communicating with Akio, it wasn't that, hey, you know, your company's crap. You don't know what you're doing. It's like, here, these are things I think you could improve upon. And over the time, it made his products vastly better. Edwin Landon did the same thing. He hires one of the most famous photographers ansel adams uh so this is uh this is land's application

of something i learned from the founder of sony land engaged adams as a consultant to polaroid this is what why adams thought this happened land's aim was to produce the most perfect picture uh the most perfect picture making process, excuse me. And he felt that I, an exacting photographer, that's a key sentence. You can't just hire some bum. He's hiring one of the best photographers in the world. So it demands quality, right? He felt that I, an exacting photographer, could provide important feedback. And then furthermore, I think there's other insights in this section that are valuable to you and I. And that's the fact that Ansel Adams has a great description of Edwin Land,

that he'd combined curiosity with discipline. From our first meeting, I responded warmly to Land's intellect and personality. We seemed intuitively to understand each other. Land had an extraordinary curiosity about everything and the discipline to satisfy it. There's all kinds of good insights into this section. So more from Adams. And this is something that he's experiencing. This is what back in the 70s, I think, maybe even the 60s when this is happening. But a sign that a new product or app or service, anything maybe worth investing in is when people describe it as a toy or a gimmick. And so that's exactly how people describe the early Polaroid cameras to Ansel Adams. Like,

why are you wasting your time with this? What are you doing? At first, Adams met resistance among his brethren. In the early days of Polaroid, I found that the majority of professional and creative photographers dismissed the process as a gimmick. I was considered by my colleagues a bit eccentric because of my enthusiasm and championing of what they considered a toy. It is somewhat rather interesting that Land found himself involved in what was the largest patent infringement case in U.S. history, considering that well before this case happened, he talked about the importance of patents openly and often. So this is land on the importance of patents. And I thought it's a great way for you to learn how he viewed it.

By very definition, things which we care about most, the important breakthroughs, do not occur spontaneously and multiple because they are the result of a very special way of seeing by a very special mind. So you can even read, there's a dual meaning in that sentence. Now he's talking about patents, but his fundamental belief is the, he had a fundamental belief in individual greatness. It should be the role of our patent system to bring encouragement, a sense of reward, and a stimulus.

There are a thousand new fields ready to be opened. Only a handful of these will be explored by large corporations, leaving many areas untouched. You can say the same thing about not only scientific invention, but businesses, right? Without the protection of the patent system, young scientific entrepreneurs cannot be counted on to develop the rest, meaning the rest of the areas that will not be explored. If he's saying the large corporations can only explore a handful, yet there's thousands of new fields out there, we need to incentivize and provide protection for the young individual that wants to bring new technology and new products to the world.

One of the most interesting non-commercial products that land ever worked on was done in secret it's the u-2 spy plane uh it's interesting enough that this spot this plane made by america in so so so-called peacetime uh was just violating uh russian airspace russian airspace at will and what i found fascinating is neither russian knew this too. Neither America or Russia said anything for different reasons. One, CIA is not exactly going to be a forthcoming institution. Right. And I can tell you what they're doing. And two, Russia couldn't admit that they couldn't stop America, that America had technology and they couldn't stop it from taking as much as many pictures as it possibly wanted. So the impact of this one invention, I guess you would call it, on global affairs is really hard to understate. So I just want to tell you a little bit about it. I thought it was hilarious, too.

So he has direct relationships. He served under a ton of seven different presidents. And Eisenhower, at the time, is president at the time in history that we're talking about right here. Right. And Eisenhower wanted a better idea as to what the Russians were up to. And Land just said directly to him, he's like, well, let's take a look and find out. So that's how the beginning of this U-2 spy plane development that goes on. Right. And so says Land prodded and pushed the project, which involved the essential yet controversial concept of conducting reconnaissance over flights of the Soviet bloc during peacetime. Sorry, I called it Russia. It's Soviet bloc at the time. I got that wrong. So Soviet bloc during peacetime through the necessary government channels are saying Land's pushing this whole thing. Right. So he's he's briefing not only Eisenhower, but he's briefing the director of the CIA at the time, this guy named Alan Doles. Land said of the plane's unprecedented potential. So now he's talking to the committee and all the people that eventually have to make this decision about why

this is so important. A single mission in clear weather can photograph in revealing detail a strip of Russia 200 miles wide and 2,500 miles long and produce 4,000 sharp pictures. So this is Land's summary of his argument here. He says, this seems to us the kind of action and technique that is right for the contemporary version of the CIA, Land argued. It is a modern and scientific way for an agency that is always supposed to be looking to do what's looking. One of the other people that played an important role was James Killian. He was the president of MIT at the time. And he's the one that, well, let me just read. He's going to tell us in this section about land's impact on a series of US presidents. And then we also learn why James in his own right was an important figure and had a difficult job.

Killian, who shouldered an immeasurable burden as the man responsible to decades of presidents for organizing America's scientific community in aid of our nation's military and intelligence agenda, provided a firsthand assessment of Land's contribution to his country. So essentially, Killian is the liaison between America's scientists and the government. Okay. And so this is what he says about land, fresh insights, a sense of adventure and a vision of greatness. I can't tell you how many times that word greatness appears in these books on land over and over and over again. He was obsessed with it. Land is an authentic genius. His powers of exposition, his facility in expressing complex ideas in novel, witting, and clarifying ways can lift a meeting or report to a higher level of discourse. So including this section is really important, not only because he's a masterful communicator of his ideas to consumers. In this case, they're talking about he's's probably the person the single individual that that that caused the judge to agree that that kodak infringed on on polar rights patents because this this gift of communication that killian's about to finish here is the same thing

he did for the judge okay so it says in his assignments he pointed the way to development of new intelligence gathering technology that has given powers to American intelligence agencies. Saves the nation billions of dollars. This is the important part. In meetings with presidents, his eloquence and lucid exposition incited their latent imagination and prompted them to make decisions and to undertake leadership roles that had been, until then, beyond their reach. The contributions Dr. Land has made to national security are innumerable,

and the influence he had on our present intelligence capabilities is unequaled. He's just a master communicator. Moving ahead. Land on problem solving. I love this. Land reminded a reporter one of his basic tenets, steeped in his personal brand of indefatigable confidence. If you can state a problem, then you can solve it. From then on, it's just hard work. So in this section of the book, they're talking about a lot of the work that went into all the research that you had to do to actually qualify and to make sure that your patents are legitimate this is before the lawsuit happens and really from this section

what the insight i took from this section was that edwin land knew that you have to protect fragile new ideas from being killed too early and this is the way he did that land's basic idea might have seemed straightforward but making it work was like trying to run a car without gasoline so they're talking about the development of the SX-70 again. But Land was not to be dissuaded. He began to staff his teams with the sharpest and most creative minds of Polaroid, sequestered them as best as he could, and inspired them with his unique creative vision and can-do-anything attitude. Land's persistence, his personal brand of tunnel vision, was a necessity. So remember, they've already described Land as having blinders on, right?'re saying he's tunnel vision it's just another it's a different way to say

the same thing i mean he's focused as maccoon explained this is the guy the second like land second in charge the person that takes over the company after land is kicked out he says one thing about land when he's doing something wild and risky he's careful to insulate himself from anyone who's critical it's very easy in the early stages to have a dream explode. So I want to draw your attention to the working relationship. This is very bizarre. Maybe it's not bizarre. Maybe it was predictable, right?

Familiarity breeds contempt, I guess, to some extent. It's bizarre that they start as adversaries and customers of each other. They start as customers and friends and then turn into adversaries. So these two companies, Kodak and Polaroid, they worked together for almost two decades before Kodak making a decision to compete head to head. So I want to talk a little bit about what happens here. Kodak's attitude towards Polaroid's segment of the photography market was changing. So Polaroid, their entire business was built around the field that they pioneered, which was instant photography.

They did not try to go into... Edwin Land said, once somebody else is making a product, I'm not making another Me Too version of it. He's like, I'm not going to just do what Kodak does. I'm going to have to create something new, right? So this is, it had not previously considered Polaroid, meaning Kodak had previously considered Polaroid,

are its new technology a threat to its near monopoly in the consumer market. It was at most a limited niche, a photographic curiosity. So that's how Kodak at one time viewed it. And this is changing. And this is going to lead them to like, hey, it's a very bizarre decision by them, too. I can't help but see, compare and contrast this story. We have the founder who stays in charge he runs

this company what from like 1926 to 1982 something like that i forgot the exact years but a long time and then kodak you know georgie's been the founder kodak's dead by this time you got this ceo comes in and then another ceo comes in it's just very different right and so the change of kodak over time was directly influenced by the people running the company. So it says it was at most a limited niche. Kodak had made tidy profits from supplying material to Polaroid for more than 15 years. So they're supplying the negatives for the film that Polaroid uses in its cameras. During which it also gave vital and continuing support to the much smaller company. I think Polaroid was Kodak's third largest customer.

Publicly, Kodak had stated it had no intention of competing directly with Polaroid in its field. Privately, a different mindset, however, had begun involving. And so now we start to see this transition from business partners to adversaries. It starts to take place because the SX-70 is out. Polaroid's like, okay, are you guys going to develop the negative film we need for this business partners to adversaries starts to take place because the sx70 is out polar is like okay are you guys uh going to develop the negative film we need for this camera just like you have you know from for over two decades for us and now kodak's like no i don't think we will and so this is leading to this inevitable head-on collision as land and other polar executives might have suspected it was a very different kodak at least in its attitude towards polaroid which they were

approaching for help for a variety of reasons the attitude of Kodak was no longer that of the paternalistic mentor, anxious to help ambitious little Polaroid with his curiosity of a photographic system. The incredible success that Polaroid was experiencing in the market clearly had caught Kodak's attention. So at this point, Polaroid's in the midst of a decade. They go from like $129 million in sales to $571 million. At this time, that's the equivalent today of over a billion dollars. So not the biggest company, and Polaroid was never the biggest company-cost swinger camera, this is a camera I think it sold for like $7 or $10, something like that, had spurred sales immensely. Seven million swingers were sold in the first three years. So again, think about how camera companies make money.

At this time, they make very little money in the hardware and 60% to 80% margins on, they have like software-esque level of profit margins on film so polaroids coming in they're making now these cheaper cameras and what's happening like they're going to make a lot more money in the film now you figure kodak would like this because the more film polaroids sells the more money kodak makes but that's not the case seven million swingers sold in the first three years driving polaroid sales and profits to new heights and continuing to change kodak's executives perception of Polaroid and its market segment growth potential.

So like, oh, maybe they discovered a market here that we kind of ignored and now we need to come in. And so this is a little bit about the motivations Kodak had to want to compete directly with Polaroid. Kodak finally realized what Polaroid knew from the start, that there are people who want to take good pictures and other people who want to see them as fast as possible. The latter group, meaning the ones that want pictures as fast as possible, is much larger than the former. The time was coming for Kodak to go after those people too. So there's a bunch of meetings with Kodak and Polaroid. Kodak's like, Hey, license these agreements to a license, your technology to us. Cause we want to get involved in this,

in your market, which is a bizarre, like, why would you think they would ever, what do you think? Edwin, Edwin land has talked about the importance of patents. He's got a wall of patents around the field that he pioneered.

Why is he like, yeah, okay, let's go ahead and do this. Let me just give away the market that I'm the one that invented it. She's like, you can compete in the instant photography market, but you've got to make your own invention. You can't I'm not going to license you mine. And so that's like they have a series of meetings. And the book was in detail, just bizarre comments by both sides during this time.

Very, very confusing. Like what the strategy here was. Like did you, from a Codic perspective. And again, when Codic gets into, when they violate the patents and go into the instant photography market, it's a curious decision to begin with because it winds up only being like 5%.

Codic's a giant company. Winds up being like 5% of their overall sales. So very, very negligible, right? And for Polar,'s being like 5% of their overall sales. So very, very negligible, right? And for Polar, it's like 90% of their sales. So anyways, this is Land's response to Kodak announcing they want to participate in the market for instant photography. But before he knows they violated his patents, he didn't know. He didn't expect them to do that, right? So it says, word of Kodak's statement apparently spread quickly to some attendees of the Polaroid meeting. When during a question and answer period, a Polaroid shareholder asked Land about Kodak's statement, Land exuded complete confidence in Polaroid's position and genuine skepticism about Kodak's ability to deliver on its promises anytime soon.

So he says something really smart. The first sentence he says is, I am the last person in the world to undersell or underestimate Kodak. He had respect for George Eastman. He had respect, a great respect for the technologies that they invented. So this idea where he's like, and for how the company is well run, he's making a ton of money. He's like, I'm the last person in the world to undersell or underestimate Kodak. Why is he saying that?

Because he probably understands Kodak, one of the people in the world at this time that understand Kodak the best. So he's like, I'm not underestimating these guys. But from his perspective, he's like, this doesn't make sense. Land acknowledged, but we are so far out ahead in conceptualization and insight and understanding and in patents that we can not only hold the lead, but move out well, well ahead of everyone else in the domain of instant photography. So at this time, Land has announced that the SX-70 is something that's real.

Kodak knows about it, but they haven't seen it. It takes like a few years. I think it's like two years from the time they learn about it till they get their hands on one. And this is their response because they're trying to, during this entire development period, Kodak is trying to create their version of it. They come up with an idea and they have like a prototype a prototype and then they they get their hands on an sx7 you're like oh

we're screwed so it says there's no doubt that these kodak engineers were amazed and disturbed by what they witnessed land demonstrated the two events a sleek metallic rectangle that with a push of a button snapped the shutter and then ejected the film unit from the camera no components were removed by the camera or by the users literally you don't do anything but press a button it was an elegant system of camera and film that the kodak engineers ultimately dubbed a masterpiece of engineering it was readily apparent to all that polaroid system was far superior to the product kodak had enveloped at that time in fact they they scrapped it they're like oh it's not good enough we gotta go back to the drawing board and during that period when they go back to the So the product Kodak had enveloped at that time. In fact, they scrapped it. They're like, oh, it's not good enough.

We got to go back to the drawing board. And during that period, when they go back to the drawing board, they just start violating patents. So something that's also unique about this book is that the author has access to a ton of the documents that are used in discovery. And the trial goes from the time they file a lawsuit till it's actually resolved. It's well over a decade. They produce hundreds of thousands of documents.

And one of the documents was very fascinating because it shows the internal communication that was going on at Kodak while they're trying to develop their what they're going to try to compete with land and the SX-70. Right. And this is their own summation of what the progress they're making. So this is an internal Kodak report acknowledged that despite whatever efforts Kodak could reasonably expect to muster, it was likely that the best it could do, excuse me, the best it could expect to produce would be a me too system, no more equal to, and in some ways less than equal to Polaroid's products. Kodak's marketing executives were forced to admit the obvious. We see no unique consumer benefit in the proposed Kodak program at this time. So the reason I want to highlight this section is because one of the things that Land is known for is his own personal model that you only do what no one else can do, something that you're uniquely suited to do. So in other words, Kodak is engaging in the direct opposite of Land's philosophy.

They're doing something in a poor imitation of something that somebody else is already doing. Again, very, very curious decision-making on Kodak's part here. Okay, so they're filing a lawsuit. And what I found really fascinating is no one was sure if Land would participate in the trial. So let me tell you a little bit about that. Polaroid lawyers who knew him best confided they had some doubt as to whether Land would ever play any active role in any aspect of the legal battle. Would he ever be willing to surrender his precious privacy to participate in the public arena of a lawsuit? Up to this point, he hadn't even seen fit to meet

Polaroid's trial counsel. Could he be relied on to become a witness on behalf of his company and subject himself to examination and pretrial dispositions or in a courtroom? Under the circumstances, the Polaroid legal team had to consider its strategic options, fully aware of the real possibility that the case would have to be conducted without the active help of the company's most famous figure. In fact, this was a possibility Kodak may have considered and a factor that some believe played an active role in the development of its strategy. Somebody talking about this case said that Kodak made the fatal flaw of severely underestimating the personality of Edwin Land. They thought he's so recluse. He's so obsessed with privacy, so obsessed with just focusing all his time on research that he would never come to a trial. What they didn't understand is for

when you're suing, when you're saying, hey, these patents, because they say, listen, we know your patents. We're saying they're invalid, that they're obvious, that you didn't actually make any technological advancements. That's not business to land. That's personal. That's them saying to one of the history's greatest geniuses that what you did for 50 years was not valuable. And so we're going to see the response that that that kind of perspective elicits from edwin land this maniacal super focused mad genius somebody you do not want as an adversary but i want to but i want to make clear though at this point he's not communicating that to anybody outside the world but himself and his like small group of assistants and everything so he does a lot of the prep work uh in secret he doesn't even tell his

own attorneys um so i'll get to that there's just so many interesting parts and there's a flat out there's plate there's times in this book where i would jump out of my seat i would like get fired up uh other times i'm just laughing at just land the way he's land speaks um so i'm going to get to the some of that stuff in a minute but before that i want to tell you in land's own own own words why he felt he had no choice but to sue kodak so says land summed up the necessity for suing kodak in a rare but wonderfully articulate interview this would be our obligation even if one step photography were but one component of our business where it is our whole field were but one component of our business. Where it is

our whole field and where we have dedicated our whole scientific and industrial career to bringing this previously non-existent field to full technological and commercial fruition, our manifest duty to our shareholders is vigorously to assert our patents. Thus, with this manifesto, the stage was set for what was to become one of the most historic patent battles in American legal history. And around this time, he's also giving public speeches and interviews. And this results in one of his most famous quotes. And so, as if reprising his role as the champion of patents, this time in real life, instead of an academic context, Land proclaimed, the only thing that is keeping us alive is our brilliance the

only way to protect our brilliance is our patents this is our very soul we're involved in our whole life for them it's just another field i want you to bring i want you to keep that last sentence the last part in um in mind too when we get to the actual trial and the benefit of you know this is land had a huge advantage this is something he lived and breathed every day for 50 years where even if you you know the the the attorneys at kodak hired you know they studied this for maybe five years ten years a good amount of time don't get me wrong but not the same thing as living it day to day as it being your your entire reason to exist as it did with land he's just going to have a massive advantage

and so while this is going on uh edwin land's inducted into the national inventors hall of fame so there's a series of um of people that he's joining i i want to read this to you one because i want to find biographies on the people on this list that i haven't covered yet and make uh future episodes of founders out of them but also to give you like where's again how important edwin land is in a historical context so it says land was joining an august and highly selected group that includes the most important inventors in history including alexander graham bell the telephone eli whitney the cotton gin the wright brothers the plane uh i know i don't know how to

pronounce his first name gmo marconi the radio sam Samuel Morse, the telegraph, Cyrus McCormick, the reaper, Charles Goodyear, vulcanized rubber, and Rudolf Diesel, the internal combustion engine. He was the first inductee ever admitted during his lifetime. So this is what he said. The reason I bring that up as an introduction to this next part, because I found it fascinating, this is what Land said when he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame. And I just thought it was interesting while he's going through this, with having his life's work threatened.

In his acceptance speech, Land chose to pay tribute to the process of invention by analogy to the basic American sense of adventure and exploration. This is a direct quote from him. We are becoming a country of scientists, but however much we become a country of scientists, we will always remain, first of all, that same group of adventurous transcontinental explorers pushing our way

from wherever it is comfortable into some more inviting, unknown, and dangerous region. Now, those regions today are not geographic. They are not the gold mines of the West. They are the gold mines of the intellect. And when the great scientists and the innumerable scientists of today respond to that ancient American urge for adventure, then the form that adventure takes is the form of of invention and when an invention is made by this new tribe of highly literate highly scientific people new things open up always those scientific adventurers have the characteristic no matter how much you know no matter how educated you are in science no matter how imaginative you are of leading you to say, I'll be darned whoever thought that such a domain existed.

So he's talking about the way we learn through scientific experiment, through trial and error, produces insights that we could have never guessed. Just think that we could never guessed on our own, that we couldn't have just thought up, that it took action to get these insights. That's extremely important. That's probably a good reason why you should read so many biographies too, right? Because Edwin Land's telling us there's certain things that you're just not going to learn unless you experience them. And there's these experiments that have played out through thousands of years in history. And then at some point, somebody wrote it, wrote it down in a book, and then we could just pick it up and read it and benefit from their multiple decades of trial and error. OK, so I want to fast forward. The lawsuit has been going on for two years. This shocked me. And this is going to lead up to land entering into the arena.

OK, so it says astoundingly, the four lawyers charged with conducting the lawsuit for Polaroid had neither seen nor heard from Land in more than two years, and really had no definitive word and little feeling for how Land might react when his number was finally called. Would he resist, unwilling to surrender his privacy, and make the process difficult? Or would he join the effort and take his seemingly rightful position at the head of Polaroid's effort. You're damn right he will. No one really knew for sure. While they were aware that Land had initiated some kind of historical review of his work in the field, that's an understatement, no one knew whether the process would encourage

or discourage him. And so they set up a meeting with Edwin Land, and this is where he enters into the arena. So I'm going to read this section to you, and I'm going to tell you what popped into my mind after when I read it. At this meeting, Land made it clear for the first time that he was willing and in fact anxious to participate fully in this case. This is somebody who does not half-ass things. That use of the word fully cannot be underappreciated. To him, this meant that consistent with his nature

of tackling problems head-on and with complete immersion, he was going to prepare himself for the endeavor in a most comprehensive way. That section fired me up. I have no idea why, but immediately,

this is what I heard playing in my mind when I read that section. So that, some of you might be too young but that is the theme song uh from a movie that came in the 1970s uh it's a movie rocky and it's where he wakes up early he's training for the the biggest experience like the biggest challenge of his life and that's really what i felt when this section it's like okay yes i'm all in and not only I'm all in, like I'm taking this, this is a personal vendetta for me. And this is the point in his life where he's also, it compounds because he's losing control of his company. And so he's dedicating almost every waking hour

to preparing for this trial. And that preparation does not disappoint. And there's just one sentence I want to read to you before we get into the actual, because the trial starts, it starts and ends with Land. So the very first day of the testimony is from Land. Then many months go by.

And then the very last person to testify, Land comes back. He's like, because he had to, he felt that Kodak's experts were so like juvenile in their understanding of instant photography. He's like, I have to correct the record. But before I get there, this is the importance of focus.

So this is really not only how Land approached the trial, but how he approached life. Land lived in his own world, one in which science demanded total immersion and obliviousness to everything else going on outside his laboratory. So that's the kind of dedication that he's going to apply to this trial. And so the trial begins, and immediately, Kodak is starting to learn how formidable an opponent Land is. I don't think I finished that, between the thought I was talking about earlier, how you'd have these series of different leaders at Kodak,

and as time, the further time passed with the death of George Eastman, no longer in control of the company, leaders at Kodak. And as time, the further time passed with the death of George Eastman, no longer in control of the company, the less respect the leaders of Kodak had for Edwin Land. They didn't like that he was arrogant. They didn't like how much attention he got. They started to belittle his achievement. They basically underestimated somebody you should never underestimate. Okay. So let's get into this. One of their attorneys, I'm not going to focus too much on the names because a lot of people here, but this guy named car right is the lead kodak attorney okay and so he's the one that's now uh cross-examining edwin land it says but the more car car tried to draw and establish parallels the more land explained how the vagaries of each system required different approaches and how

ultimately it was simply pointless to try to equate them there's so many exchanges between these two people in the book they're so fabulous this assessment came with great authority from someone who had spent a working lifetime grappling with these problems none of which had been solved easily or rapidly by obvious means by this point Carr must have finally realized that he was up against a fully engaged and formidable adversary. Carr had long believed that Land's later patents, like those in the suit, were merely restatements of his earlier work. Now, for the first time, Carr and his client, Kodak, were having distinctions between the generations of Polaroid patents explained to them in a way they had perhaps not been able to appreciate. So it's important while this is going on. Guess who else is getting this education? The judge. There's no jury in this trial. It's just the judge.

So all they have to do is convince one person that what they that land created was unique and patentable right because kodak's saying yeah we understand they have patents we're saying they're not valid so that's the crux of this entire their entire argument which each successive answer it was becoming more apparent that land was going to be a force throughout the rest of this legal battle uh the attorneys for polaroid knew once and for all that he was going to be their star witness in their view uh in their view meaning the view of the Polaroid's attorneys, Carr was no match for Land on his home turf of instant photography technology. Carr's underestimation of Land, remember Land just said, I'm not underestimating Kodak,

I'm not going to make that fundamental mistake, right? But Kodak's, they're underestimating Land. Carr's underestimation of Land might also have been influenced by the contingent at Kodak, including Fallon, that's the person running the CEO of Kodak at the time, who frankly had come to dislike Pollard's founder and had taken to minimizing his achievements. Now, this is what makes this story so remarkable and the section of the book particularly remarkable. I'm not trying to diminish Land's adversary. He was no chump. Carr had done his homework. It's just you can't replicate. Land knows more about instant photography than anybody else in history. How can you compete with that? So it says Kodak's trial counsel, meaning Carr, was certainly well

prepared for this moment. Carr had studied instant photography, including Polaroid's patents, for more than 12 years. This was going on for a long time. He had written opinion letters for Kodak, laying out in detail his arguments as to why each of the patents are now being litigated, where it's either invalid or not infringed by Kodak's products or both. He wound up being wrong on all that. He also had supervised or consulted on litigations in several foreign jurisdictions, seeking either to invalidate or cancel the overseas counterparts to several of the patents in suit. So before they take on Polaroid directly in the United States, they try to challenge them in smaller other

domains to see if they can kind of like whittle away. And he conducted long, detailed and contentious depositions of each of Polaroid's key inventors, including 12 full days with Land. Right. So again, he's he's preparing, but it's impossible to match the level of preparation that Land had. And now we hear Land's view that this is not business. This is personal and I'm going to fight you. He clearly did not look at the case solely from a business point of view. Ultimately, this was a personal battle for him. On a visceral level, Land could not help but react emotionally to the basic thrust of Kodak's

invalid defense, which in essence asserted that the so-called inventions disclosed in the Polaroid patents were not worthy of protection because they either had been previously discovered or, more insultingly, were so trivial that it would have been obvious to any reasonable person. Oh boy. He couldn't help but view this line of attack by Kodak as a denigration of the work he and his colleagues had done, a work that he spent his entire life to. It was bad enough that Kodak had challenged him and his company in the field they had created by using patented and protective technology, but the more

Kodak assailed Polaroid's inventions, the angrier Lan became. He believed in the righteousness of Polaroid's position and clearly looked forward eagerly to having his day in court. So there's a paragraph I found in the middle of all this. It was really fascinating. And it's Land explicitly stating he does not believe in diversification. So he's no longer running the company at this time. But he also has still his influence with the people that are running the company. So he's very upset that they're going away from the field.

They have a monopoly on and where they've been focused on. So it says, uh, it'd been almost a year since he had stepped down as Polaroids chief executive. Uh, Bill McCune had reorganized top management by appointing four senior vice presidents to oversee the diversification of Polaroids activities beyond instant photography.

Land thought this was a dumb idea. The strategic move, the strategic move did not make Land happy. So he talks about he's insisted over and over again to shareholders he had no plans to diversify. It would be madness, he said, now that we are in the 90-yard line with the other guy 30 yards behind to run around nothing, meaning to stay or focus on where it needs to be. Now to sheer frustration, he took the unusual step of inviting a journalist to his office for a series of interviews. So says Land's central message was to make it clear that he does not intend to allow anyone at Polaroid to devote too much of its resources to diversification.

Land wanted to make sure that they did not lose sight of what he believes would be the company's primary mission, which is to make instant photography the photographic system of the masses. They land this direct quote from Land now. They are not entitled to any neglect whatsoever of making the most out of the great initial opportunity. And I honestly believe that the basic amateur field is in its infancy, not its maturity. He says he threatens to derail the diversification plan if the company's new managers stray too far from his original vision. So there's a document that takes place that is the one of Polaroid's attorneys summarizing all like they were doing their own research, not only against Kodak, but against Polaroid. And in this this document, there was this fascinating paragraph, because really what I'm about to read to you is a summary of Land's philosophy on how to build a technology company. It says creation of a new technology such as one step photography requires that a single individual have in mind the objective to be reached.

Right. So that's Land. That's anybody at the top of the company. One person knows where they're going. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others, the people that they hire. Right. But the single dominant individual, and I like that he uses that word because we've talked about this phenomenon multiple times on the podcast that the company might start out

with a bunch of co-founders, right? But inevitably in every single book that we've covered, one person is the main person, clearly. This master plan must be supported by the efforts of many others, but the single dominant individual must constantly assure himself that the individual efforts complement one another and create support for an integrated

system. So he used that philosophy to build an integrated camera system. It could be applied to a ton of different domains. So I wanted this, this sentence really, I want you to, well, let me read it to you. This is really interesting to me. Land's reputation as one of the most innovative figures in technology was also on the line, meaning that if the lawsuit, if the judge finds that you invalidated the patents, meaning that Land wasn't as innovative as everybody thought he was, right? He would, at last, be able to fight for the vindication of his life's work and the very survival of the company he had founded, built, and led for more than 40 years.

Think about that all that is contained in that one sentence. 40 years of sacrifice. A lifetime is at stake. Despite his determination and months of preparation, the gravity of this moment was clearly weighing on the 72-year land now i would estimate a good two-thirds of the book it's just on the trial so um i'm gonna just hit you know basic highlights stuff that gives us insight into edwin land um what i want to point out though is this is something that we've also talked about over and over again that a lot of founders of ideas of companies of movements they really think about themselves not necessarily as a scientist not as an entrepreneur but as a teacher and land definitely he compared running his company to being a physics professor and

leading his students on a grand adventure right so the massive benefit that you have is not only does land know more than anybody else right go back to the old david ogilvy quote that's so important the good ones know more uh but but he's and now he's a masterful communicator but the trial set up it really is allowing land to adopt the role of a teacher this is a massive advantage because it's not like he could take complex he could take complex ideas but also also explain them in more simple ways, ways that you and I can understand. So he's doing the same thing for the judge. So he's on the stand, right?

And the judge, Judge Zobel, this is what she says to him. She goes, if I am to understand this, he's giving a piece of uh testimony and so this is her response to it if I'm to understand this I don't yet you have to explain it in greater detail than than that she said quickly becoming more comfortable on the witness stand as though as his role evolved into in effect the court's personal tutor on his favorite subject. Land obliged the judge, speaking slowly and quietly to explain the process to her satisfaction. So think about this massive advantage. His role is now evolving into

the court's personal tutor. Essentially think about that. The judge's personal tutor on his favorite subject. That's just, I can't overstate or understate, I don't know what the right word there is how important that is and that just gives you a massive advantage to edwin landon polaroid and so this next part i legitimately laughed there's a lot of things that he says on the

stand it's just funny because i mean there is some of it comes off a bit um dickish uh but he's just he does not respect the level of understanding that kodak's council and their so-called expert witnesses which is weird okay so let me back up on that give you some more understanding polaroid uh their two main expert witnesses is lan and rogers the people that literally the people doing the work and that understood at a fundamental level kodak they didn't let the engineers that develop their own instant photography system testify. They had outside witnesses, people that had never made instant photography system, which is again, why would you do that? So he's going back to the part that makes me laugh.

Lance understanding of this subject is so deep that it's hard to explain all the intricacies of his knowledge, right? So, but he does come across, he's able to do this in some domains where he's just like, listen, you don't understand what you're talking about. So this is an example of that, where he just, he's so confused that, you know, in a normal trial, you've probably seen on TV or otherwise, usually their attorney's the one that's yelling out objection. And in this case, it winds up being Land. So this was a funny part. So it says, on another occasion, Land had objections to another of the charts code actually prepared.

So they're trying to explain for the judge, who's non-technical, these are the ideas. Let's make visualizations. And then Land looks at the visualizations like, no, that doesn't even describe the process correctly. That visualization sucks. In other words, he doesn't use those words, but he says, he explained this one inaccurately depicted one of the prior art references. I'm having trouble. Those aren't the film units in the process, Land explained.

They are highly idealized statements. I always have the fear that if I agree with your simple questions, I am by implication agreeing that these charts are indeed a description of the product. And they are not. I am worried about generalizations implicit in the question that makes me a witness to something that I don't believe he protested. And then right here, this is the part that's funny. He goes, I don't even know if it's my place. And this is the part that I thought was funny. I don't even know if it's my place to object, Land Wonder, turning to the judge in frustration, but I object to being such a witness. And then Judge Zobel immediately jumped in to

respond. You're putting Mr. Kerr, that's his attorney, Land's attorney, you're putting Mr. Kerr out of a job, Dr. Land. All eyes turned to Polaroid's counsel, but implicit in his response was an acknowledgement that his witness had the proceedings well under control i will be very quiet your honor said kerr oh man oh so uh land such a powerful witness that eventually kodak's attorney car has to stop cross-examining him because all it's doing is letting land talk more the more land talks the better it is for Polaroid. So it says Carr simply and accurately read Zobel, Judge Zobel's body language, deciding that an extensive cross-examination was becoming counterproductive for one or both of two reasons. Number one, because it was annoying and thus possibly alienating the judge.

And two, because it was only providing the uncontrollable land with more and more opportunity to further Polaroids rather than Kodak's case. Think about how formidable an adversary that they engaged with. You can't even cross-examine him because the more he speaks, the more damaging your case. You're supposed to be pursuing, like when you're doing a cross-examine, you're supposed to be pushing forward your case. And it's doing the opposite. he's making your case look worse so eventually they give up on uh cross-examining him before he gets off uh off the stand from cross-examining though this this is another part that really made me laugh and i have some some um i'm going to tell you my interpretations of this section so it says when the judge asked Land to explain why Carr's description was incorrect, Land's attorney again objected that this was an unfair question because it assumed

that Land had everything Carr had said in mind. The judge turned to the witness, meaning Land, and asked, do you think it's unfair? Yes, Land replied, but I'm used to it. As he launched into a lecture for the next several minutes on the flaws in Carr's description. So think about what he's saying there. He's like, yes, it's unfair, but I'm used to it. I'm used to him getting things wrong. Now, this also illustrated for me why I thought that was so humorous is because, again, it illustrates for us the difference between being completely immersed in something, which Land was, and studying it while working on other things, which Carr, the attorney for Kodak, did. He has a lot of experience writing about it, litigating other patent cases, in this case, thinking about this case for a

decade. But that's not diminishing. He did the best he can. But in the meantime, while Land spent his whole life working on this stuff, Carr's trying cases he's going to law school he's got other interests and so this is just there's a huge distinction into how deep a level of knowledge that land has that just car can't even grasp to the point where he's making points and then land is refuting them and then getting better like think about if you were the judge in that case yes it's unfair but i'm used to him being getting things wrong so eventually land um he stops testifying right the whole trial plays out i'm fast forwarding through all that then he has to come back this is the point where he's reading the testimony he's staying up on it remember this guy's not he it's impossible for him to to do he's either zero or a hundred right there is no

oh i'm kind of engaged i'm kind of thinking about he's all in so they there's three expert witnesses that kodak brings and he he's livid at what they said he thought they were just absolutely they're not experts in his opinion right so he comes back and this is this is why i also think it was inevitable polaroid is going to win this case because it the entire trial wasended. It starts with Land and it ends with Land, right? So this is the end of the trial. Land has been reviewing what Kodak expert's witnesses have been saying in their testimony and he felt that they had a poor understanding. So this is, it says the 74th and last day of the trial was devoted completely to a return

to the stand of Polaroid's first and star witness, Edwin Land. It was a truly dramatic moment. Land resumed his position in the witness box some four months after his original testimony had been completed. Until the moment he walked to the front of the courtroom, no one but Polaroid's attorneys knew Land would return as Polaroid's final witness. A lot had transpired in the interim. Once again, Land was there to defend his company's case, but now he was also there to fight on a more personal level. Land had insisted on this opportunity to defend what he perceived as the personal attacks some Kodak experts had leveled against his work, as well as on his scientific opinions and thus his ultimate credibility as an expert in what had become,

not surprisingly, a battle of experts. The rebuttal presentation was as thoroughly planned as Land's earlier direct examination, but this time it was as much intended as a refutation of Codex experts. And so the next section I'm going to read to you, I really summarize this. I got this. I'm going to take this. I'll take it from here. This is what Land is essentially telling us. With great enthusiasm, back in his role as professor in residence, on the witness stand, Land proceeded to explain the differences in great detail, providing a historical perspective on the development of these camera mechanisms

going back to the days of Thomas Edison. Land then addressed, I'm going to skip over the names. I'm going to just say their first letter of their last name. Land then addressed Kay's testimony that his patent did not solve any problems that were not already solved by prior art and how a person of ordinary skill in the art would have approached this aspect of camera development. ticked off more than a half a dozen considerations that Kay, who had conceded had never designed an instant camera, so why is he testifying to begin with, had not taken into account in his testimony. And then during this section, I'm going to keep going back to a couple of the insights he has here, but it really is a reminder. People, whether that person is a judge or not, they are attracted when other humans speak passionately about a subject they

care deeply about again this is a massive advantage for edwin land and polaroid land cared deeply about light and color and perception and photography and you're now just giving him the floor to convince the judge the ultimate decision maker of this so it says the judge acknowledged i admit it's very confusing, when Land jumped in. For the sake of science and truth in this court, let me just say two or three sentences. For the sake of my edification, offered the judge. Meaning she's alert, she's learning. And she talks about at the very end how fascinating she found the whole trial.

Right when she says that, you have to think from a codex perspective, uh-oh, that's not good. For the next few minutes, Land offered more than just a couple sentences. It was more of an introductory lecture in a field of tremendous fascination for Land. That's what I mean about speaking passionately. Of course, the judge, any human, is going to be attracted to this. One, he would continue to research in the years to come in explaining the differences. Now he's attacking the other. He dismantled all three kodak experts this is the second one and explaining the difference between how the east

the east the eyes see color and how a color film must be designed to duplicate that color image land exposed what he contended was to profound an accuracy in t's explanation to sum up his refutation of Kodak's rival expert, Land noted finally that the common misunderstanding that T espoused was a creationist view of color, but it's not the way it works. So he's saying you don't even understand the field that you claim to be an expert in. And now it's time for him to take on the third expert. He says Land was livid when he read the transcript.

According to Land, not only was A's opinion based on what he considered to be inadequate scientific understanding, but A had felt free to declare Land wrong despite having admittedly zero actual experience in the field about which he was testifying. Think about it from Land's perspective, how infuriating. I like to use the word livid there. This guy gets up in front of everybody in the public domain and criticizes me for something he doesn't even understand he had felt so he's saying he's livid that livid that a had felt free to declare land was wrong despite having admittedly zero zero actual experience in the field about which he was

testifying the design and construction of integral instant film units something the land dedicated Think about that. Let me read that sentence again. How pissed would you be? Considering his lack of experience, the air of confidence which with A had offered his baseless opinion offended Land's scientific sensibilities profoundly. Land was determined to refute A completely and dramatically and insisted that he be given that opportunity. Land is fired up. And I got to the point at the end of the trial, and this is what the judge says. It is said that patent cases are deadly dull. I confess that contrary to the predictions of my colleagues,

I did not find this case dull at all. In fact, I found it interesting and enjoyable. I attribute that to your cooperation and your professionalism. And I thank you all for that. She's talking about the witnesses, both sides of opposing counsel, everybody.

It was 1130 AM on Thursday, February 25th, 1982. The gavel fell, the court adjourned and Polaroid versus Kodak trial was over. It was more than three years before they get the results, and this is the result. Judge Zobel upheld the validity of eight of the ten Polaroid patents involved, ruling that seven had been infringed by Eastman Kodak. Polaroid had prevailed and Land, his work, his company, and his scientific ethic had been totally vindicated.

So they're ordered, hey, not only do you violate the patents, you're going to pay Polaroid, but remove all of your products off the market immediately. So this is really, this section is really the cost of making Me Too products, and this is before they have to pay Polaroid. Between removing all of its cameras and film from storage shelves across the country and shuttering its manufacturing operations, its defeat had already cost Kodak the staggering amount of $494 million. It had also cost Kodak an additional $150 million

to settle class action lawsuits with unhappy customers. So you're at $650 million before the judgment comes down. patent case. It's announced. Then it goes to appeal. So there's a series of things I'm going to omit here. All you have to know is that they wind up settling after that instead of continuing this now has already gone on for a very long time. So it says after Polaroid also threatened to appeal, the two parties at long last settled the case for $925 million. That is more than $1.6 billion in 2014 dollars. The settlement took place on July 16, 1991. It was 15 years, 3 months, and 20 days after the lawsuit had begun. The final award was much less than Polarit had sought

and much more than Kodak thought it should pay. But it was a historic and unprecedented penalty. As of this writing in 2014, it still remains the largest satisfied judgment awarded by a court in a patent infringement case in U.S. history. Polaroid's victory was stunning and total. In this regard, Polaroid's victory over Kodak was clearly, for Dr. Land and generations of other innovators to follow, a triumph of genius. And I'll leave the story there. That's 134 books down, 1,000 to go. If you want the full story, if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, are available at founderspodcast.com. You'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.

Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.