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Quote of the Day

 

“We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year.”

 

-Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid Corporation, which would demonstrate its first instant camera on this day in 1947.

 

February 21st – This Day in Stock Market History

1947 – Polaroid demonstrates its first instant camera.

 

 

Polaroid was one of the premier tech stock of its day. The company’s founder, Edwin Land, was a prolific inventor who was viewed as the next Thomas Edison, and was a huge inspiration to Apple’s founder Steve Jobs.

 

Land would found the company in 1937 after studying chemistry at Harvard for a year and inventing the plastic sheet-light polarizer in 1929. Land would run Polaroid from its founding in 1937 until 1981, seeing his company grow to as many as 28,000 employees and doing $1.4 billion in sales.

However, the company was never able to adapt to the rise in digital photography, and would be bankrupt by 2001.

 

The charts above come from an article “Who Killed Polaroid?” by Michael E. Gordon

Best  February 21st in Dow Jones Industrial Average History

1974 – Up 1.90%, 15.80 points.

 

Worst February 21st in Dow Jones Industrial Average History

1980 – Down 2.07%, 18.34 points.

 

 

Read of the Day

What Steve Jobs learned from Edwin Land of Polaroid – Forbes

So Long, Polaroid – Marketwatch – a look into why Polaroid failed.

 

For those interested in more Edwin Land’s influences on Steve Jobs is discussed in more detail in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs

 

 

 

<– Go To Previous Day: February 20th – 1795: North American Land Co. founded

Go To Next Day: February 22nd – 1967: Berkshire Hathaway purchases National Indemnity, entering Buffett into the insurance industry –>