Edwin Herbert Land, the founder of Polaroid Corporation, may be best known as the inventor of the world's first instant camera. But he invented polarised sunglasses first, another ground breaking product and the one which gave him the funds to develop the Polaroid camera.

Mr Land enjoyed experimenting with light waves so much that he dropped out of Harvard at the end of his first year to pursue his own course of research.

He moved to New York at the age of 17 and, because he had neither money or the backing of a research institution, was forced to sneak into a laboratory at Columbia University late at night to use their equipment.

The night shifts paid off as Mr Land invented Polaroid film, effectively the first cheap filter capable of polarizing, or splitting up, light. He returned to Harvard but never completed his chemistry course.

At the age of 28, Mr Land set up Polaroid Corporation and began developing polarised sunglasses, which cut down the amount of reflected light for the wearer, for the mass market. He sold the first pair in 1939.

Mr Land then turned his attention to the instant film camera, for which he became most famous. The first one was launched in 1948.

The camera rapidly became a success, as the combination of gimmickery, almost instant gratification and practicality captured the public's imagination. The sight of people clustering around the cameras to view recently taken shots became a mainstay of the party circuit, particularly in America's well-to-do circles.

From the first sale of the so-called Model 95, in Boston's Jordan Marsh department store, the company went on to sell over one million Polaroid films in just over a year, by which point about 4,000 dealers were selling the cameras and its accessories.

The cameras also did their bit for their country. In 1950, the it was used to photograph US soldiers that had been hospitalised in the Korean War and the pictures were sent back to their families.

But all good things come to an end and the Polaroid camera was no exception. The last one was sold in February as the struggling manufacturer opted to throw its lot in with digital technology and ceased making Polaroid film for old fashioned cameras

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