MIT Museum gets donation from Polaroid archives

Globe Staff

The MIT Museum said today that PLR IP Holdings LLC, the owner of the Polaroid brand, has donated a collection of classic Polaroid products and prototype designs from its 73-year archive.

In its day, some Polaroid products and processes were regarded as cutting-edge science. Among the donations are rare Polarized glasses dating from the 1939 World's Fair, original newsprint sketches by Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land, a historic bellows camera, as well as examples of Land-designed camera prototypes, said the museum in a press release.

The museum added that it plans to display a few artifacts from this new acquisition in June.

"Polaroid is a company that both shaped and was shaped by MIT," Deborah Douglas, curator of science and technology for the MIT Museum, said in a statement. "This collection is of major significance to the MIT Museum not only for its intrinsic technical and historical value, but also because of Edwin Land's strong connections with MIT. Land is considered the originator of the idea for MIT's unique (and much emulated) Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)."

The photo with this post shows Douglas inspecting a Polaroid Model 95A, one of the earliest "picture in a minute" cameras. The photo was included with the MIT Museum's press release. It was taken by Mark Ostow.