Putting Science To Work

The military, however, hasn't given up trying to make the laser into a weapon. Ronald Reagan's ill-fated Star Wars program called for orbiting X-ray lasers to zap enemy missiles, and the Army is still experimenting with battlefield lasers. While they won't slice enemy soldiers in half, they can temporarily blind troops.

Instant Photography
Edwin Land had long since dropped out of Harvard, founded a successful corporation and come up with scores of inventions when he took on the challenge of instant photography just after World War II. Until then, photographers had to develop their film and then print it on paper--or send it off to a professional lab--before they actually had a picture in hand. Land was convinced he could shortcut this laborious process by creating a camera that did all the work itself, and by 1947 he had done it. Instead of conventional film, the Polaroid Land Camera was loaded with photographic paper coated with a paste of light-sensitive chemicals. A mere 60 sec. after the photographer tripped the shutter, out popped a snapshot. The first Polaroids were black-and-white; the company introduced color in 1963. Land's invention added a new dimension to photography, but for him it was just another stop on a long scientific journey. He went on to do basic research on vision and came up with important insights into how the brain perceives color.