To celebrate its 80th anniversary, Polaroid has released a short film, titled “The Fishbowl”, to tell the story of how its founder Edwin Land discovered the concept of the polarised film.
Set in the year 1927 at Harvard University, Boston, where Edwin was a student, he discovered a rainbow spectrum falling on the shoulder of a girl during class.
The occurrence took him by surprise and sparked his curiosity, which led to him dropping out from Harvard to start his own experiments.
Due to the lack of financial support, he sneaked into a laboratory of Columbia University to conduct his experiments and invented the polarised film, which made the basis for polarized lenses.
Polarised film then rose to prominence quickly after it was used in producing 3D movie glasses, goggles used by the Air Force and recreational purposed on regular eyewear. Now, it has become an essential part of all eyewear we have today.
And here’s the full film for your entertainment:
