While strolling down Broadway in 1926, Edwin Herbert Land was blinded by the headlights of an oncoming automobile. It occurred to him that there must be a way to develop a polarizing sheet that would reduce glare from light. Born on May 7, 1901, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Land was the son of a merchant. While attending the Norwich Academy, he excelled in physics and was a member of the debate and track teams. He was attending Harvard University as a freshman when he first had his revelation about the polarizing process. He left Harvard and moved to New York, working secretly at night in a laboratory at Columbia University. In 1929 Land returned to Harvard, this time with his wife, Helen. Although Land would never graduate, he had already developed the first synthetic sheet polarizer by trapping tiny crystals in a thin sheet. By 1932 the sheet was actually being produced and would...