Word: toy
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Expensive Toy. While vacationing in Santa Fe with his family in 1943, Land had his three-year-old daughter Jennifer pose for some pictures on a walk. The child asked how long it would be until she could see them. Land, who had been interested in photography since childhood, immediately began wondering how photos might be developed and printed right inside the camera. He now claims jokingly that by the time he and Jennifer returned from their walk, he had solved all the problems "except for the ones that it has taken from 1943 to 1972 to solve." Actually...
...time was probably gained back by moments of sheer inspiration, scientific and otherwise. While searching for a small but powerful motor to run the new camera, a Polaroid engineer had the unusual insight one afternoon that the motors used to run his son's toy race cars might work. The next day Polaroid researchers invaded a Boston hobby shop and eventually modeled the SX-70 motor on an electric-train engine that they spotted there. While mulling over the complaint of a Polaroid owner, who had phoned all the way from Africa to protest that he could not find...
...formed by pouring liquid concrete into molds to form made-to-order planks--allows for extraordinarily quick construction. Using this technique the 400-foot laboratory wing was built in seven months. The technique used in putting together the pre-cast concrete planks resembles the way a child's popsiclestick toy raft is constructed. After the girders are put in place, the thin 60-foot-long planks are laid adjacent to one another and sealed weathertight. In some cases, the sealing has been reinforced with epoxy glue, a cement that when hardened is stronger than the concrete...
...images are radically different. They are both limpid and mysterious, and this is largely the result of Westermann's loving attention to craft. He manipulates his repertory of boxes, laminations, dovetails, locks, hinges and clamps with unerring finesse. The effect-as in the absurd log-cabin toy tower that rises, with a metal swan flapping from its crenelations, inside the box called Battle of Little Jack's Creek, 1970-is to convince you of the utter reality, the solid presence, of a completely surreal world, pinned and glued at all its joints and present in all its contradictions...
...offshoot of Carbide's farming ventures is a $3.50 toy, "Nature's Window." Marketed by Ideal Toy Corp., it is a kit of seeds and two plastic disks containing a chemical gel that retains water; in it, seeds begin to germinate within a couple of days. By year's end Carbide expects to sell 15 million disks to Ideal...