On the day after Thanksgiving 1948, a sales team from the Polaroid Corporation arrived at the Jordan Marsh department store in Boston to kick off the holiday shopping season. They carried with them their company's latest innovation, a ground-breaking camera that provided "pictures in a minute." 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, empowering people from all backgrounds to control and define the way the outside world saw them; 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 (a number only surpassed by Thomas Edison and Elihu Thomson). 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. This one-hour biography will chronicle Land's life and legacy, from global success to the financial disaster that led to his resignation and the epic legal battle with Kodak, the former partner he felt had betrayed him. Directed by Gene Tempest.
Broadcast In: English Duration: 0:57:00