Land had a penchant for administering impromptu color-blindness tests to his employees. He stored a personal bottle of Tanqueray gin beneath the counter at the Original Bar and Grill, a block away from Polaroid’s old Main Street headquarters in Cambridge.

He disliked biography attempts. “I regard my scientific papers as my essential biography,” Land said. “I pour my whole life into the scientific project I’m investigating. I leave behind the things I’ve done in the past to do the work in the present.”

Pictured: Land stood outside his laboratory in Cambridge in 1946. This was taken using experimental films he was then developing.