Polaroid Eyewear Such glasses could screen out glare rather than simply darken the landscape. Land and Wheelwright contracted to begin production of Polaroid Day Glasses, a longtime source of revenue for Polaroid. With venture capital from railroad tycoon W. Averill Harriman and merchant banker and part-time songwriter James P. Warburg, Edwin Land, George Wheelwright, and Julius Silver incorporated Polaroid Corporation on September 13, 1937. Polaroid began the manufacturing of polarizing sheet for windows in railroad observation cars. In 1939 Day Glasses were the source of most of Polaroid's $35,000 profit. Although sales rose to $1 million in 1941, the company's 1940 losses
Polaroid SX-70 cost of $180 for the camera and $6.90 for each film pack of ten pictures ($ and $, respectively, adjusted for inflation) limited demand, Polaroid sold 700,000 by mid-1974. In 1973–4, the Skylab 3 and 4 astronauts used an SX-70 to photograph a video display screen to be able to compare the Sun's features from one orbit to the next. There were a variety of models beginning in 1972 with the original SX-70, though all shared the same basic design. The first model had a plain focusing screen (the user was expected to be able to see the difference between