PREMIERES MONDAY, MAY 19 at 8:00PM

Long before the iPhone, another inventive device allowed everyone to instantly chronicle their lives — the Polaroid camera. The product, and the company’s unique culture, would launch not only instant photography mania but also become the model for today’s Silicon Valley tech culture. It all began with the Polaroid Model 95, first offered for sale in the fall of 1948. Its revolutionary power to allow the photographer to see the picture then and there would change the country, then the world.

Mr. Polaroid, a new film from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, tells the little-known story of the man behind the camera, a Harvard dropout named Edwin Land. Over a half century ago, before the smartphone, Land was dreaming up “a camera that you would use as often as your pencil or your eyeglasses.” He would also come to believe his company was “on its way to lead the world — perhaps even to save it.” Hubris, technology, brilliance, and a billion photographs a year are all part of the rollicking Polaroid story.

Land actually founded his company while chasing another goal altogether - finding a solution for headlight glare which led to thousands of motorist fatalities a year. But the tech he designed for carmakers never caught on, and Land eventually found his way to the field of photography. At that time, photography was no simple act. It involved chemicals, darkrooms, specialists or special equipment, and above all, time: it usually took a week for a customer to see a photo after it was snapped. Land wanted to create a device that would collapse time and put the darkroom inside the camera. Helping Land make this dream a reality was an unusual group of pioneering female scientists and researchers, including Eudoxia Muller, who would make the first successful Polaroid instant photograph in 1943, and Meroë Morse, who for almost 30 years ran the Film Research Division. Land’s inclusive vision would break industry norms and expand opportunities for women in cutting-edge technological innovation.

In the coming decades, as demand for the camera exploded, instant photography would become one of the most singular, iconic, and popular artistic mediums of the 20th century. The products' popularity revolutionized traditional photography and changed the way in which Americans recorded their lives. It also helped its creator Edwin Land earn a reputation as one of the most visionary and prolific inventors of the 20th century. At the time of his death in 1991, Land held 535 patents. He had also created a new kind of corporate culture that would come to be adopted by a veritable army of dot-com and technology companies who saw Land as their godfather - most notably Apple's Steve Jobs, who sought Land's counsel and spoke frequently of his influence.