Shot at the Union Square Greenmarket a couple of hours ago. No reason, just liked what I saw.
Click to enlarge.
A new bit of Polaroid kitsch from an inventive Etsy seller: Polaroid-camera pillows.
SX-70, Swinger, Colorpack III, a couple of others, all from a seller named intheseam, who has a full line of unorthodox pillow designs, with images of stuff like manhole covers.
Spotted in the window of a cheap electronics store across from the Empire State Building.
Photographed with a Polaroid 180 camera, just to be perverse about it.
It’s a long way from Dr. Land’s “Don’t do anything that someone else can do” to commoditized stuff like this, and Polaroid’s current owners have a long climb back. (And by the way, Sony? We’re looking at you next. Akio Morita would not be proud of what you’re doing to his old shop.)
A few weeks back, I documented my trip to the Polaroid site in Waltham, where demolition had briefly begun, then stopped in (I think) late 2010.
Turns out that it was my last chance, because the backhoes have started up again, and building W2, which you can see in the post linked above, is nearly gone. These photos were generously shared by Jean Snell, a 25-year Polaroid veteran whose father, son, mother, brother, and uncle also worked for the company. (Click on any thumbnail photo in the gallery below for a full view.)
There’s a further report here, at a local Waltham news blog called Brand New Watch, with more photos. The comments thread reveals that one building (Polaroid’s old W3, it sounds like, though I’m not sure) will be retained and reskinned and heavily overhauled into office space. Developer’s plans are here, and they seem okay–certainly better than a bunch of empty shells. But it is symptomatic of the new economy: When Polaroid was wrecked, Waltham lost a lot of good manufacturing jobs (with pensions and benefits), and the new complex will bring in its place service and retail jobs (with few of either). Better than nothing, worse than before. (Click on any photo for full size.)
The first Polaroid camera in my life was my dad’s Pronto! model. We bought it for him as a Father’s Day present around 1979. I was always curious about how the sonar autofocus pinger worked. Here it is:
Thirty-odd years later, here’s the card I received from my own son, who is 3.
(He signed his name, Alex, at the upper right.) For reference, the camera he’s drawing is this one, because he sees me carrying it almost every day.
Note excellent rendering of the rangefinder and lensboard. Could not be happier about life with this little guy. (Not to mention his mother, who engineered this.) And, of course, happy Father’s Day to my own dad.
I’ve posted before about visiting the building that housed Edwin Land’s lab (not to mention Alexander Graham Bell’s before him, and Kaplan Furniture in between). It’s on a narrow alleylike side street in Cambridge, running just two blocks between Albany and Main Streets, that’s called … well, that’s the point of this post. Is it Osborn Street or Osborne Street? Both spellings are rampant, and I had to pick one for the book.
Google Maps says Osborne.
Click image to enlarge and read.
A bunch of old Polaroid paperwork (here, an issue of the Polaroid Newsletter from December 1960) spells it Osborn.
So does Victor McElheny’s biography of Edwin Land, which is quite rigorously correct.
An article in The Tech, MIT’s newspaper, says “Osborne.” That was presumably written or edited by a local, who ought to know. But mistakes creep into local papers all the time.
Polling the Google results (searching “osborn street cambridge massachusetts” et al.) is inconclusive: You get 960,000 hits for Osborne, 824,000 for Osborn. Too close to be any help.
I thought about this some, when working on the book. And in the end, I went with “Osborn,” for one reason above all: the street sign, which I checked when I was in Cambridge. It’s barely visible on Google Street View, but it’s clear enough that you can tell there’s no “e.”
“Osborn Street,” pretty conclusively. (Click to enlarge.)
Yes, there are mistakes on street signs too, and Osborn(e) Street has only one corner with a sign, which made me pause. If anyone out there has authoritative information to the contrary—e-mail me. (Get it? “E”-mail? Oh, I crack myself up.)
Update, 6/18/12: Discovered that the Cambridge, Massachusetts, property register lists it as “Osborn.” And I e-mailed Google Maps to suggest that it might be an error, and, incredibly, they changed it the next day. Whoa.
BUY THE BOOK
Available in many bookstores, online and off-. Click the photo to order from my local, the Strand Book Store.
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WATCH THE TRAILER
On Vimeo: click the image to view.
