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The Rowland Institute at Harvard

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Edwin Herbert Land , ForMemRS , FRPS , Hon.MRI (May 7, 1909 – March 1, 1991) was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation . He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography , and the retinex theory of color vision , among other things. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in late 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.

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104-457: The Rowland Institute at Harvard , formerly the Rowland Institute for Science , was founded by Edwin H. Land (founder of Polaroid Corporation ) as a nonprofit, privately endowed basic research organization in 1980. The institute merged with Harvard University on July 1, 2002. The Rowland Institute is dedicated to experimental science across a wide range of disciplines. Research subjects at

208-524: A "cornerstone" of the NYSE, with a benefit of having all of a deal's players close at hand, including investment bankers , lawyers , and accountants . After Wall Street firms started to expand westward in the 1980s into New Jersey , the direct economic impacts of Wall Street activities have gone beyond New York City. The employment in the financial services industry, mostly in the "back office" roles, has become an important part of New Jersey's economy. In 2009,

312-490: A "phoenix-like resurrection" of the area, with residential, commercial, retail and hotels booming in the "third largest business district in the country". At the same time, the investment community was worried about proposed legal reforms, including the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act which dealt with matters such as credit card rates and lending requirements. The NYSE closed two of its trading floors in

416-509: A "tug-of-war" between business interests on Wall Street and authorities in Washington, D.C. , the capital of the United States by then. Generally during the 19th century Wall Street developed its own "unique personality and institutions" with little outside interference. In the 1840s and 1850s, most residents moved further uptown to Midtown Manhattan because of the increased business use at

520-517: A $ 4 stock transfer tax , stock clerks protested. At other times, city and state officials have taken steps through tax incentives to encourage financial firms to continue to do business in the city. A post office was built at 60 Wall Street in 1905. During the World War I years, occasionally there were fund-raising efforts for projects such as the National Guard . On September 16, 1920, close to

624-544: A backwater in American life". During the New Deal years, as well as the 1940s, there was much less focus on Wall Street and finance. The government clamped down on the practice of buying equities based only on credit, but these policies began to ease. From 1946 to 1947, stocks could not be purchased " on margin ", meaning that an investor had to pay 100% of a stock's cost without taking on any loans. However, this margin requirement

728-476: A crash. They made a fortune but turned into the crisis's pantomime villains. Most, though, got burned – the banks are still gradually running down portfolios of non-core loans worth $ 800bn. The first months of 2008 was a particularly troublesome period which caused Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke to "work holidays and weekends" and which did an "extraordinary series of moves". It bolstered U.S. banks and allowed Wall Street firms to borrow "directly from

832-673: A cult of personality, and so, on his death, Land's family had a laboratory associate shred his personal papers and notes, a task that would take three years to complete. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Land was: Patents Wall Street Wall Street is a street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City . It runs eight city blocks between Broadway in

936-513: A day which caused a "traffic jam" of paper with "batteries of clerks" working overtime to "clear transactions and update customer accounts". In 1973, the financial community posted a collective loss of $ 245 million, which spurred temporary help from the government. Reforms were instituted; the Securities & Exchange Commission eliminated fixed commissions, which forced "brokers to compete freely with one another for investors' business". In 1975,

1040-488: A downturn with a sizable drop in year-end bonuses of $ 6.5 billion, according to one estimate from a state comptroller's office. To guard against a vehicular bombing in the area, authorities built concrete barriers, and found ways over time to make them more aesthetically appealing by spending $ 5000 to $ 8000 apiece on bollards . Parts of Wall Street, as well as several other streets in the neighborhood, were blocked off by specially designed bollards: ... Rogers Marvel designed

1144-522: A family of financial means and agreed to fund the company. After a few early successes developing polarizing filters for sunglasses and photographic filters, Land obtained funding from a series of Wall Street investors for further expansion. The company was renamed the Polaroid Corporation in 1937. Land further developed and produced the sheet polarizers under the Polaroid trademark. Although

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1248-512: A favorable internal review. 42°21′49″N 71°04′40″W  /  42.3637°N 71.0779°W  / 42.3637; -71.0779 Edwin H. Land Edwin Land was born to Jewish parents in Bridgeport, Connecticut , to Matie ( née  Goldfaden ) and Harry Land, a scrap-metal dealer from a village near Kyiv (Ukraine). Growing up, he was known to take apart household appliances, such as

1352-431: A financial wall in the crisis. Foolishly and recklessly, the banks didn't look at these loans adequately, relying on flawed credit-rating agencies such as Standard & Poor's and Moody's, which blithely certified toxic mortgage-backed securities as solid ... A few of those on Wall Street, including maverick hedge fund manager John Paulson and the top brass at Goldman Sachs, spotted what was going on and ruthlessly gambled on

1456-590: A key magnet for the Wall Street remains the New York Stock Exchange Building . Some "old guard" firms such as Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch (bought by Bank of America in 2009), have remained "fiercely loyal to the Financial District" location, and new ones such as Deutsche Bank have chosen office space in the district. So-called "face-to-face" trading between buyers and sellers remains

1560-466: A large single crystal of a polarizing substance, he could manufacture a film with millions of micron-sized polarizing crystals that were coaxed into perfect alignment with each other. Land returned to Harvard University after developing the polarizing film, but he did not finish his studies or receive a degree. Despite not receiving a college degree, he was still referred to from many as Dr. Land. According to biographer Peter Wensberg, once Land could see

1664-429: A mantel clock and the family's new gramophone , as well as blowing all the house's fuses when he was six years old. He was scolded by his father when taking apart a phonograph and he vowed that "nothing or nobody could stop me from carrying through the execution of an experiment" He had an elder sister named Helen who had a difficult time pronouncing Edwin's name, so she called him "Din" a nickname that stuck throughout

1768-474: A move towards transforming itself into an electronic exchange. Beginning in September 2011, demonstrators disenchanted with the financial system protested in parks and plazas around Wall Street. On October 29, 2012, Wall Street was disrupted when New York and New Jersey were inundated by Hurricane Sandy . Its 14-foot-high (4.3 m) storm surge, a local record, caused massive street flooding nearby. The NYSE

1872-617: A new Retinex Theory of color vision. His popular demonstrations of color constancy raised much interest in the concept. He considered his leadership towards the development of integral instant color photography – the SX-70 film and camera – to be his crowning achievement. Although he led the Polaroid Corporation as a chief executive, Land was a scientist first and foremost, and as such made sure that he performed "an experiment each day". Despite holding no formal degree, employees, friends, and

1976-562: A new kind of bollard, a faceted piece of sculpture whose broad, slanting surfaces offer people a place to sit in contrast to the typical bollard, which is supremely unsittable. The bollard, which is called the Nogo, looks a bit like one of Frank Gehry's unorthodox culture palaces, but it is hardly insensitive to its surroundings. Its bronze surfaces actually echo the grand doorways of Wall Street's temples of commerce. Pedestrians easily slip through groups of them as they make their way onto Wall Street from

2080-520: A picture of her. After she asked why she could not see the picture her father just took of her, within an hour he already had the idea for an instant film camera. His patent attorney, Donald Brown, was also there at the time visiting Santa Fe and he quickly approached him with this idea and Brown agreed on the idea. After this trip, research for the development of this idea began immediately. A little more than three years later, on February 21, 1947, Land demonstrated an instant camera and associated film to

2184-477: A renewed push for capitalism and business , with national efforts to de-regulate industries such as telecommunications and aviation . The economy resumed upward growth after a period in the early 1980s of languishing. A report in The New York Times described that the flushness of money and growth during these years had spawned a drug culture of sorts, with a rampant acceptance of cocaine use although

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2288-417: A second run based on customer demand. All fifty-seven cameras and all of the film were sold on the first day of demonstrations. During his time at Polaroid, Land was notorious for his marathon research sessions. When Land conceived of an idea, he would experiment and brainstorm until the problem was solved with no breaks of any kind. He needed to have food brought to him and to be reminded to eat. He once wore

2392-520: A street in Cambridge, Massachusetts , was later named in his memory. The street is at one end of Memorial Drive , in Cambridge, where the Polaroid company headquarters building was located (over a mile west on Memorial Drive from Land Blvd.). Polaroid occupied several buildings in various places in Cambridge. In the early 1970s, starting with the previously known phenomenon of color constancy , Land developed

2496-523: A vast, neural spaghetti of wires, Web sites and trading platforms — the N.Y.S.E. is clearly no longer the epicenter. Nor is New York. The largest mutual-fund complexes are in Valley Forge, Pa. , Los Angeles and Boston , while trading and money management are spreading globally. Since the end of the cold war, vast pools of capital have been forming overseas, in the Swiss bank accounts of Russian oligarchs, in

2600-695: The Boston Consulting Group suggesting that 65,000 jobs had been permanently lost because of the downturn. But there were signs that Manhattan property prices were rebounding with price rises of 9% annually in 2010, and bonuses were being paid once more, with average bonuses over $ 124,000 in 2010. A requirement of the New York Stock Exchange was that brokerage firms had to have offices "clustered around Wall Street" so clerks could deliver physical paper copies of stock certificates each week. There were some indications that midtown had been becoming

2704-716: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York , and commercial banks and insurance companies. Several other stock and commodity exchanges have also been located in Lower Manhattan near Wall Street, including the New York Mercantile Exchange and other commodity futures exchanges, along with the NYSE American . Many brokerage firms owned offices nearby to support the business they did on the exchanges. The economic impacts of Wall Street activities extend worldwide. In

2808-651: The Manhattan Institute was that the securities industry accounts for 4.7 percent of the jobs in New York City but 20.7 percent of its wages, and he estimated there were 175,000 securities-industries jobs in New York (both Wall Street area and midtown) paying an average of $ 350,000 annually. Between 1995 and 2005, the sector grew at an annual rate of about 6.6% annually, a respectable rate, but that other financial centers were growing faster. Another estimate, made in 2008,

2912-421: The Rowland Institute for Science where he found a vacant lot besides Charles River at Kendall Square. Land died on March 1, 1991, in Cambridge, Massachusetts , at the age of 81. Land's family, his wife, Helen, and two daughters, Jennifer and Valerie declined to disclose the cause of his death. Land himself disliked being written about, wanting to leave behind a legacy of published scientific work, rather than

3016-515: The U.S. state of New Jersey , and only two salespeople in New York City; the remaining 33 employees work in a center in Kansas. Wall Street in a conceptual sense represents financial and economic power. To Americans, it can sometimes represent elitism and power politics, and its role has been a source of controversy throughout the nation's history, particularly beginning around the Gilded Age period in

3120-472: The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, he led Polaroid to the forefront of the affirmative action movement. He had an artistic vision. In his laboratory, he built giant studio cameras the size of bedroom closets that produced large format (20 x 24 inch) prints. He gave photographers free access to these cameras in return for some of the prints they produced. This practice was continued by

3224-481: The subprime mortgage crisis from 2007 to 2010, Wall Street financing was blamed as one of the causes, although most commentators blame an interplay of factors. The U.S. government with the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailed out the banks and financial backers with billions of taxpayer dollars, but the bailout was often criticized as politically motivated, and was criticized by journalists as well as

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3328-534: The City Wall"). This use of both names for the street also appears as late as 1691 on the Miller Plan of New York. New York Governor Thomas Dongan may have issued the first official designation of Wall Street in 1686, the same year he issued a new charter for New York. Confusion over the origins of the name Wall Street appeared in modern times because in the 19th and early 20th century some historians mistakenly thought

3432-528: The Dutch had called it "de Waal Straat", which to Dutch ears sounds like Walloon Street. However, in 17th century New Amsterdam, de Waal Straat (Wharf or Dock Street) was a section of what is today's Pearl Street . The original wall was constructed under orders from Director General of the Dutch West India Company , Peter Stuyvesant , at the start of the first Anglo-Dutch war soon after New Amsterdam

3536-647: The Fed" through a vehicle called the Fed's Discount Window, a sort of lender of last report. These efforts were highly controversial at the time, but from the perspective of 2010, it appeared the Federal exertions had been the right decisions. By 2010, Wall Street firms, in Clark's view, were "getting back to their old selves as engine rooms of wealth, prosperity and excess". A report by Michael Stoler in The New York Sun described

3640-541: The Financial Service cluster, there were three major sectors: more than 60 percent were in the securities industry ; 20 percent were in banking ; and 8 percent in insurance . Additionally, New Jersey has become the main technology infrastructure to support the Wall Street operations. A substantial amount of securities traded in the United States are executed in New Jersey as the data centers of electronic trading in

3744-584: The Fixed Income Clearing Corporation and Emerging Markets Clearing Corporation. Having a direct tie to Wall Street employment can be problematic for New Jersey, however. The state lost 7.9 percent of its employment base from 2007 to 2010 in the financial services sector in the fallout of the subprime mortgage crisis . Of the street's importance as a financial center, New York Times analyst Daniel Gross wrote: In today's burgeoning and increasingly integrated global financial markets —

3848-565: The Genetrix balloon borne cameras, the U-2 program , Corona and Samos photographic satellites, and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory . He was a frequent advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhower on photographic reconnaissance matters. In the 1950s, James G. Baker , Land, and his team helped design the optics of the revolutionary Lockheed U-2 spy plane. He also contributed to the design of

3952-623: The Optical Society of America. Called the Land Camera , it was in commercial sale less than two years later. Polaroid originally manufactured sixty units of this first camera. Fifty-seven were put up for sale at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston before the 1948 Christmas holiday. Polaroid marketers incorrectly guessed that the camera and film would remain in stock long enough to manufacture

4056-660: The SEC threw out the NYSE 's "Rule 394" which had required that "most stock transactions take place on the Big Board's floor", in effect freeing up trading for electronic methods. In 1976, banks were allowed to buy and sell stocks, which provided more competition for stockbrokers . Reforms had the effect of lowering prices overall, making it easier for more people to participate in the stock market. Broker commissions for each stock sale lessened, but volume increased. The Reagan years were marked by

4160-576: The Shanghai vaults of Chinese manufacturing magnates and in the coffers of funds controlled by governments in Singapore, Russia, Dubai , Qatar and Saudi Arabia that may amount to some $ 2.5 trillion. An example is the alternative trading platform known as BATS , based in Kansas City , which came "out of nowhere to gain a 9 percent share in the market for trading United States stocks". The firm has computers in

4264-622: The Society. The other Foreign Member of the Royal Society who also signed the book on the same occasion was Ed Purcell , the discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance and a friend of Edwin Land. It is reputed that the only other times that the book (or in this case a page of it) of the Royal Society was taken outside its house in London was when it was signed by Sigmund Freud and Winston Churchill, both in their homes in London. In his later years, Land founded

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4368-535: The U.S. equity market for all major stock exchanges are located in North and Central Jersey . A significant amount of securities clearing and settlement workforce is also in the state. This includes the majority of the workforce of Depository Trust Company, the primary U.S. securities depository ; and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation , the parent company of National Securities Clearing Corporation,

4472-514: The Wall Street employment wages were paid in the amount of almost $ 18.5 billion in the state. The industry contributed $ 39.4 billion or 8.4 percent to the New Jersey's gross domestic product in the same year. The most significant area with Wall Street employment is in Jersey City . In 2008, the "Wall Street West" employment contributed to one third of the private sector jobs in Jersey City. Within

4576-403: The area around historic Trinity Church. Cars, however, cannot pass. The Guardian reporter Andrew Clark described the years of 2006 to 2010 as "tumultuous", in which the heartland of America was "mired in gloom" with high unemployment around 9.6%, with average house prices falling from $ 230,000 in 2006 to $ 183,000, and foreboding increases in the national debt to $ 13.4 trillion, but that despite

4680-541: The area, but increasingly the latter predominated, and New York's financial industry became centered on Wall Street. During the 20th century, several early skyscrapers were built on Wall Street, including 40 Wall Street , once the world's tallest building. The street is near multiple subway stations and ferry terminals . The Wall Street area is home to the New York Stock Exchange , the world's largest stock exchange by total market capitalization , as well as

4784-558: The average. Business writer John Brooks in his book Once in Golconda considered the start of the 20th century period to have been Wall Street's heyday. The address of 23 Wall Street , the headquarters of J. P. Morgan & Company , known as The Corner , was "the precise center, geographical as well as metaphorical, of financial America and even of the financial world". Wall Street has had changing relationships with government authorities. In 1913, for example, when authorities proposed

4888-405: The buildings on Wall Street itself saw only little physical damage. One estimate was that 45% of Wall Street's "best office space" had been lost. The NYSE was determined to re-open on September 17, almost a week after the attack. During this time Rockefeller Group Business Center opened additional offices at 48 Wall Street . Still, after September 11, the financial services industry went through

4992-554: The city had grown well beyond the wall. A new City Hall was built at Wall and Nassau in 1700 using the stones from the bastions as materials for the foundation. Slavery had been introduced to Manhattan in 1626, but it was not until December 13, 1711, that the New York City Common Council made a market at the foot of Wall Street the city's first official slave market for the sale and rental of enslaved Black people and Indians. The market operated from 1711 to 1762 at

5096-496: The city's tax revenue, and 22 percent of the city's total wages, including an average salary of US$ 360,700. The seven largest Wall Street firms in the 2000s were Bear Stearns , JPMorgan Chase , Citigroup , Goldman Sachs , Morgan Stanley , Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers . During the recession of 2008–10, many of these firms, including Lehman, went out of business or were bought up at firesale prices by other financial firms. In 2008, Lehman filed for bankruptcy, Bear Stearns

5200-426: The city's tax revenues and 20% of the state's, the downturn has had huge repercussions for government treasuries. New York's mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly over a four-year period dangled over $ 100 million in tax incentives to persuade Goldman Sachs to build a 43-story headquarters in the Financial District near the destroyed World Trade Center site. In 2009, things looked somewhat gloomy, with one analysis by

5304-590: The clamor of business and trade and the owners complaining that they can't get anything done," according to a historian named Burrows. The opening of the Erie Canal in the early 19th century meant a huge boom in business for New York City, since it was the only major eastern seaport which had direct access by inland waterways to ports on the Great Lakes . Wall Street became the "money capital of America". Historian Charles R. Geisst suggested that there has constantly been

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5408-462: The coming of night and the suspension of business was entirely changed last night as hundreds of men worked under the glare of searchlights to repair the damage to skyscrapers that were lighted up from top to bottom. ... The Assay Office, nearest the point of explosion, naturally suffered the most. The front was pierced in fifty places where the cast iron slugs, which were of the material used for window weights, were thrown against it. Each slug penetrated

5512-446: The companies included in Dow's original calculations were American Tobacco Company , General Electric , Laclede Gas Company , National Lead Company , Tennessee Coal & Iron , and United States Leather Company . When the average "peaks and troughs" went up consistently, he deemed it a bull market condition; if averages dropped, it was a bear market . He added up prices, and divided by

5616-603: The company; the result was the Polaroid Collection . Compiled since the 1970s, the collection grew to between 16,000 and 24,000 photos shot by some of the world's greatest artists and photographers, including Ansel Adams , Chuck Close , Robert Frank and Andy Warhol . The collection, an asset of the Polaroid Corporation, remained intact until 2010 when, in controversial circumstances, it was broken up and put up for sale in lots. Land resigned from his role as Presidential Advisor during Nixon's Watergate scandal in 1973. He

5720-564: The corner of Wall and Broad Street , the busiest corner of the Financial District and across the offices of the Morgan Bank , a powerful bomb exploded . It killed 38 and seriously injured 143 people. The perpetrators were never identified or apprehended. The explosion did, however, help fuel the Red Scare that was underway at the time. A report from The New York Times : The tomb-like silence that settles over Wall Street and lower Broadway with

5824-477: The corner of Wall and Broad streets", and in 1998, offered substantial tax incentives to try to keep it in the Financial District. Plans to rebuild it were delayed by the September 11 attacks. The exchange still occupies the same site. The exchange is the locus for a large amount of technology and data. For example, to accommodate the three thousand people who work directly on the exchange floor requires 3,500 kilowatts of electricity, along with 8,000 phone circuits on

5928-533: The corner of Wall and Pearl Streets, and consisted of a wooden structure with a roof and open sides, although walls may have been added over the years; it could hold approximately 50 people. New York's municipal authorities directly benefited from the sale of slaves by implementing taxes on every person who was bought and sold there. In these early days, local merchants and traders would gather at disparate spots to buy and sell shares and bonds, and over time divided themselves into two classes—auctioneers and dealers. In

6032-425: The dealer slipped him a heat-sealed plastic envelope of cocaine and he passed her cash, the transaction was being watched through the sunroof of her car by Federal drug agents in a nearby building. And the customer — an undercover agent himself -was learning the ways, the wiles and the conventions of Wall Street's drug subculture. In 1987, the stock market plunged, and, in the relatively brief recession following,

6136-406: The economy changed from "agricultural to industrial to financial" and New York maintained its leadership position despite these changes, according to historian Thomas Kessner. New York was second only to London as the world's financial capital. In 1884, Charles Dow began tracking stocks, initially beginning with 11 stocks, mostly railroads. He looked at average prices for these eleven. Some of

6240-492: The end of his passion in research and decided to continue with his interest in color vision. From 1978, he was a regular visitor to the laboratory of Semir Zeki at University College London, to attend Zeki's experiments on color vision. Although they never published together, Land was to design the gelatin filters to accompany the paper on the physiology of color vision published by Zeki in Nature in 1980. These filters, and especially

6344-600: The first inexpensive filters capable of polarizing light, which he called Polaroid film . He was not associated with an educational institution and lacked the tools of a proper laboratory, making this a difficult endeavor, so he would sneak into a laboratory at Columbia University late at night to use their equipment. He also availed himself of the New York Public Library to scour the scientific literature for prior work on polarizing substances. His breakthrough came when he realized that, instead of attempting to grow

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6448-603: The first passively guided smart bombs , and a special stereoscopic viewing system called the Vectograph , co-invented with Czech refugee Joseph Mahler, which revealed camouflaged enemy positions in aerial photography. With all this, he was also a consultant to the National Research Defense Committee which focused its efforts on non-governmental scientific research. On a vacation to Santa Fe, New Mexico , with his three-year-old eldest daughter, Jennifer, he took

6552-548: The former investment firm of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette was described as a Wall Street firm but had its headquarters on Park Avenue in Midtown . A report described the migration from Wall Street: The financial industry has been slowly migrating from its historic home in the warren of streets around Wall Street to the more spacious and glamorous office towers of Midtown Manhattan. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bear Stearns have all moved north. Nevertheless,

6656-453: The headquarters of banks. These include: Another key anchor for the area is the New York Stock Exchange Building at the corner of Broad Street . It houses the New York Stock Exchange , which is by far the world's largest stock exchange per market capitalization of its listed companies, at US$ 28.5 trillion as of June 30, 2018. City authorities realize its importance, and believed that it has "outgrown its neoclassical temple at

6760-514: The initial major application was for sunglasses and scientific work, it quickly found many additional applications: for color animation in the Wurlitzer 850 Peacock jukebox of 1942, for glasses in full-color stereoscopic (3-D) movies, to control brightness of light through a window, a necessary component of all LCDs , and many more. During World War II , he worked on military tasks, which included developing dark-adaptation goggles, target finders,

6864-867: The institute includes chemistry, physics and biology, and focus on interdisciplinary work and the development of new experimental tools. It is located on the Charles River near Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a few miles away from the main campus of Harvard. The flagship program at the Rowland Institute is the Fellows Program. The program supports early career experimental scientists. Rowland Fellows receive funding for salary and research expenses and are allocated their own laboratory space. The Rowland Institute also provides technical support from permanent expert staff. The Fellowship lasts for five years, with continuation past two years contingent on

6968-477: The late 18th century, there was a buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would gather to trade securities. The benefit was being in proximity to each other. In 1792, traders formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement which was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange . The idea of the agreement was to make the market more "structured" and "without

7072-506: The late 19th century. Wall Street became the symbol of a country and economic system that many Americans see as having developed through trade, capitalism, and innovation. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry , or New York–based financial interests. Wall Street has become synonymous with financial interests, often used negatively. During

7176-436: The locus of financial services dealings even by 1911. But as technology progressed, in the middle and later decades of the 20th century, computers and telecommunications replaced paper notifications, meaning that the close proximity requirement could be bypassed in more situations. Many financial firms found that they could move to Midtown Manhattan , only four miles (6 km) away, and still operate effectively. For example,

7280-533: The long-wave one, were later used to study details of the structure of DNA. Before Land died, Zeki negotiated with the Royal Society to take a page of the Royal Society Fellows Book for Land to sign in the United States, since he was too ill to attend the signing ceremony in London. It was signed at a small private ceremony in Land's home in Cambridge, Mass., attended by his son-in-law; the citations were read by Zeki and Hugh Huxley admitted Land formally to

7384-402: The lower tip of the island. The Civil War greatly expanded the northern economy, bringing greater prosperity to cities like New York which "came into its own as the nation's banking center" connecting "Old World capital and New World ambition", according to one account. J. P. Morgan created giant trusts and John D. Rockefeller 's Standard Oil moved to New York City. Between 1860 and 1920,

7488-439: The manipulative auctions", with a commission structure. Persons signing the agreement agreed to charge each other a standard commission rate; persons not signing could still participate but would be charged a higher commission for dealing. In 1789, Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration when George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall on April 30, 1789. This

7592-463: The number and quality of financial jobs in the city. One estimate was that Wall Street firms employed close to 200,000 persons in 2008. Another estimate was that in 2007, the financial services industry which had a $ 70 billion profit became 22 percent of the city's revenue. Another estimate (in 2006) was that the financial services industry makes up 9% of the city's work force and 31% of the tax base. An additional estimate from 2007 by Steve Malanga of

7696-538: The number of stocks to get his Dow Jones average . Dow's numbers were a "convenient benchmark" for analyzing the market and became an accepted way to look at the entire stock market . In 1889 the original stock report, Customers' Afternoon Letter , became The Wall Street Journal . Named in reference to the actual street, it became an influential international daily business newspaper published in New York City. After October 7, 1896, it began publishing Dow's expanded list of stocks. A century later, there were 30 stocks in

7800-559: The original records of New Amsterdam , the Dutch always called the street Het Cingel ("the Belt"), which was also the name of the original outer barrier street, wall, and canal of Amsterdam . After the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, they renamed the settlement "New York" and in tax records from April 1665 (still in Dutch) they refer to the street as Het Cingel ofte Stadt Wall ("the Belt or

7904-496: The overall percent of actual users was most likely small. A reporter wrote: The Wall Street drug dealer looked like many other successful young female executives. Stylishly dressed and wearing designer sunglasses, she sat in her 1983 Chevrolet Camaro in a no-parking zone across the street from the Marine Midland Bank branch on lower Broadway. The customer in the passenger seat looked like a successful young businessman. But as

8008-491: The plane with Kelly Johnson . Also in this decade, Land first discovered a two-color system for projecting the entire spectrum of hues with only two colors of projecting light (he later found more specifically that one could achieve the same effect using very narrow bands of 579 nm and 599 nm light). Some of this work was later incorporated in his Retinex theory of color vision . In 1957, Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate, and Edwin H. Land Blvd.,

8112-486: The press respected his scientific accomplishments by calling him Dr. Land. The only exception was The Wall Street Journal , which refused to use that honorific title throughout his lifetime. Land often made technical and management decisions based on what he felt was right as both a scientist and a humanist, much to the chagrin of Wall Street and his investors. From the beginning of his professional career, he hired women and trained them to be research scientists. Following

8216-546: The public. Analyst Robert Kuttner in the Huffington Post criticized the bailout as helping large Wall Street firms such as Citigroup while neglecting to help smaller community development banks such as Chicago's ShoreBank . One writer in the Huffington Post looked at FBI statistics on robbery, fraud, and crime and concluded that Wall Street was the "most dangerous neighborhood in the United States" if one factored in

8320-519: The rest of his childhood and was used among his closest friends. Land attended the Norwich Free Academy at Norwich, Connecticut , a semi-private high school, and graduated in the class of 1927 with honors. The library there was posthumously named for him, having been funded by grants from his family. He studied physics at Harvard College , more specifically, optics, but left after his freshman year, moving to New York City . There he invented

8424-414: The same clothes for eighteen consecutive days while solving problems with the commercial production of polarizing film. As the Polaroid company grew, Land had teams of assistants working in shifts at his side. As one team wore out, the next team was brought in to continue the work. Elkan Blout , a close colleague of Edwin Land at Polaroid, wrote: "What was Land like? Knowing him was a unique experience. He

8528-466: The setbacks, the American economy was once more "bouncing back". What had happened during these heady years? Clark wrote: But the picture is too nuanced simply to dump all the responsibility on financiers. Most Wall Street banks didn't actually go around the US hawking dodgy mortgages; they bought and packaged loans from on-the-ground firms such as Countrywide Financial and New Century Financial, both of which hit

8632-601: The solution to a problem in his head, he lost all motivation to write it down or prove his vision to others. Often his wife, Terre, would extract from him the answers to homework problems, at the prodding of his instructor. She would then write up the homework and hand it in so that he could receive credit and not fail the course. In 1932, he established the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories together with his Harvard physics professor, George Wheelwright III, to commercialize his polarizing technology. Wheelwright came from

8736-472: The stone an inch or two [3–5 cm] and chipped off pieces ranging from three inches to a foot [8–30 cm] in diameter. The ornamental iron grill work protecting each window was broken or shattered. ... the Assay Office was a wreck. ... It was as though some gigantic force had overturned the building and then placed it upright again, leaving the framework uninjured but scrambling everything inside. The area

8840-404: The surrounding area lost 100,000 jobs according to one estimate. Since telecommunications costs were coming down, banks and brokerage firms could move away from the Financial District to more affordable locations. One of the firms looking to move away was the NYSE. In 1998, the NYSE and the city struck a $ 900 million deal which kept the NYSE from moving across the river to Jersey City ; the deal

8944-504: The trading floor alone, and 200 miles (320 km) of fiber-optic cable below ground. Finance professor Charles R. Geisst wrote that the exchange has become "inextricably intertwined into New York's economy". Wall Street pay, in terms of salaries and bonuses and taxes, is an important part of the economy of New York City , the tri-state metropolitan area , and the United States . Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called

9048-595: The wall after their 1664 takeover (a cause of the Second Anglo-Dutch War ), as did the Dutch from 1673 to 1674 when they briefly retook the city during the Third Anglo-Dutch War , and by the late 1600s the wall encircled most of the city and had two large stone bastions on the northern side. The Dutch named these bastions "Hollandia" and "Zeelandia" after the ships that carried their invasion force. The wall started at Hanover Square on Pearl Street, which

9152-454: The west and South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry , New York–based financial interests, or the Financial District. Anchored by Wall Street, New York has been described as the world's principal fintech and financial center . The street

9256-470: The work on the fort by constructing a breastwork, and the farmers are to be summoned to haul the sod." The first Anglo-Dutch War ended in 1654 without hostilities in New Amsterdam, but over time the "werken" (meaning the works or city fortifications) were reinforced and expanded to protect against potential incursions from Native Americans , pirates, and the English. The English also expanded and improved

9360-399: The world's most economically powerful city and leading financial center . As such, a falloff in Wall Street's economy could have "wrenching effects on the local and regional economies". In 2008, after a downturn in the stock market, the decline meant $ 18 billion less in taxable income, with less money available for "apartments, furniture, cars, clothing and services". Estimates vary about

9464-463: Was a true visionary; he saw things differently from other people, which is what led him to the idea of instant photography. He was a brilliant, driven man who did not spare himself and who enjoyed working with equally driven people." Beginning in the early years of the Cold War, Land played a major role in the development of photographic reconnaissance and intelligence gathering efforts. Projects included

9568-506: Was also the location of the passing of the Bill of Rights . Alexander Hamilton , who was the first Treasury secretary and "architect of the early United States financial system", is buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church , as is Robert Fulton famed for his steamboats . In the first few decades, both residences and businesses occupied the area, but increasingly business predominated. "There are old stories of people's houses being surrounded by

9672-399: Was bought by JPMorgan Chase forced by the U.S. government , and Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America in a similar shot-gun wedding. These failures marked a catastrophic downsizing of Wall Street as the financial industry goes through restructuring and change. Since New York's financial industry provides almost one-fourth of all income produced in the city, and accounts for 10% of

9776-568: Was built using the labor of both Black slaves and white colonists. In fact Stuyvesant had ordered that "the citizens, without exception, shall work on the constructions… by immediately digging a ditch from the East River to the North River, 4 to 5 feet deep and 11 to 12 feet wide..." And that "the soldiers and other servants of the Company, together with the free Negroes, no one excepted, shall complete

9880-499: Was closed for weather-related reasons, the first time since Hurricane Gloria in September 1985 and the first two-day weather-related shutdown since the Blizzard of 1888 . Wall Street's architecture is generally rooted in the Gilded Age . The older skyscrapers often were built with elaborate facades, which have not been common in corporate architecture for decades. There are numerous landmarks on Wall Street, some of which were erected as

9984-514: Was described as the "largest in city history to prevent a corporation from leaving town". In 2001, the Big Board , as some termed the NYSE, was described as the world's "largest and most prestigious stock market". When the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001 , the attacks "crippled" the communications network and destroyed many buildings in the Financial District, although

10088-585: Was incorporated in 1653. Fearing an over land invasion of English troops from the colonies in New England (at the time Manhattan was easily accessible by land because the Harlem Ship Canal had not been dug), he ordered a ditch and wooden palisade to be constructed on the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. The wall was built of dirt and 15-foot (4.6 m) wooden planks, measuring 2,340 feet (710 m) long and 9 feet (2.7 m) tall and

10192-487: Was one of the names in Nixon's "political opponents" (following the original top 20 enemies) Despite the tremendous success of his instant cameras, Land's Polavision instant movie system was a financial disaster, and he resigned as Chairman of Polaroid on July 27, 1982. When he retired, he had 535 patents to his name, only surpassed by Thomas Edison and Elihu Thomson . While he was set for retirement years, this did not mean

10296-481: Was originally known in Dutch as Het Cingel ("the Belt") when it was part of New Amsterdam during the 17th century. An actual city wall existed on the street from 1653 to 1699. During the 18th century, the location served as a slave market and securities trading site , and from 1703 onward, the location of New York's city hall, which became Federal Hall . In the early 19th century, both residences and businesses occupied

10400-624: Was reduced four times before 1960, each time stimulating a mini-rally and boosting volume, and when the Federal Reserve reduced the margin requirements from 90% to 70%. These changes made it somewhat easier for investors to buy stocks on credit. The growing national economy and prosperity led to a recovery during the 1960s, with some down years during the early 1970s in the aftermath of the Vietnam War . Trading volumes climbed; in 1967, according to Time Magazine , volume hit 7.5 million shares

10504-461: Was safe" on Wall Street. A few days later, on October 24, stock values plummeted. The stock market crash of 1929 ushered in the Great Depression , in which a quarter of working people were unemployed, with soup kitchens, mass foreclosures of farms, and falling prices. During this era, development of the Financial District stagnated, and Wall Street "paid a heavy price" and "became something of

10608-423: Was subjected to numerous threats; one bomb threat in 1921 led to detectives sealing off the area to "prevent a repetition of the Wall Street bomb explosion". September 1929 was the peak of the stock market. October 3, 1929, was when the market started to slip, and it continued throughout the week of October 14. In October 1929, renowned Yale economist Irving Fisher reassured worried investors that their "money

10712-454: Was that Wall Street provided a fourth of all personal income earned in the city, and 10% of New York City's tax revenue. The city's securities industry, enumerating 163,400 jobs in August 2013, continues to form the largest segment of the city's financial sector and an important economic engine, accounting in 2012 for 5 percent of private sector jobs in New York City, 8.5 percent (US$ 3.8 billion) of

10816-505: Was the shoreline at that time, crossed the Indian path that the Dutch called Heeren Wegh , now called Broadway , and ended at the other shoreline (today's Trinity Place), where it took a turn south and ran along the shore until it ended at the old fort . There was a gate at Broadway (the "Land Gate") and another at Pearl Street, the "Water Gate." The wall and its fortifications were eventually removed in 1699—it had outlived its usefulness because

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