Kodak History

On July 12, 1854 in the village of Waterville Maria Kilbourn and George Washington Eastman had a child that would change the way the world took pictures forever, and that child was George Eastman. When George was five his father sold the family nursery business and moved to Rochester where he founded the Eastman Commercial College. Shortly thereafter George’s father died and the College failed leaving George and his mother in financial despair. So because of family circumstances George had to drop out of school at the age of fourteen and find a job. His first job was as a messenger boy with an insurance firm, which paid three dollars a week. A year later George got a job as an office boy for a different insurance firm. There through his own hard work, dedication, and initiative he soon took charge of filing policies and even began to write them. With these new responsibilities his pay rose to five dollars a week. After four years of working at the insurance firm he was hired as a junior clerk at Rochester Savings Bank where his current salary of five dollars a week tripled to more than fifteen dollars a week. Four years later George had planned to take a vacation to Santo Domingo. When a colleague of his suggested that he make a record of the trip George went out and purchased a photographic outfit with all the paraphernalia of the wet plate days. This was to be his first endeavor into the photographic world. At the time cameras were as big as today’s microwave ovens and needed a heavy tripod to support them. He also had purchased a tent to develop the pictures before the glass plates dried out. The supplies needed consisted of glass tanks, a heavy plate holder and a jug of water the entire outfit “was a pack-horse load” as George described it. Learning how to use his new equipment cost him five dollars. After all this George never made his Santo Domingo trip but became completely engrossed in photography and seeking out ways to simplify the process. George had heard that British photographers were using their own gelatin emulsions that remained sensitive after they were dry and could be exposed at your leisure. Using a formula he got from a British magazine for emulsions, George began making his own. He continued to work at the bank during the day while experimenting in his mother’s kitchen in the evenings. After three years of continued experiments, George had developed a formula that worked. By 1880, he had patented a dry plate formula and the machine for preparing large numbers of the plates.

In 1879 George was granted a British patent on his dry plate machine. One year later he was granted an American patent. In 1880, George leased the third floor on State Street in Rochester where he began his commercial manufacturing of dry plates. One of his first purchases was a two horse power second hand engine, “’I really needed only one horse power’, he later recalled ‘this was a two horse-power, but I thought perhaps business would grow up to it. It was worth a chance, so I took it’” (Eastman). In 1881 George formed a partnership with Henry A. Strong called the Eastman Dry Plate Company. Later that year, George quit the Rochester Savings Bank to devote all his time to his new company. While managing all phases of the firms activities, he continued with his research to simplify photography and developing. As his company grew, it faced financial doom at least once when his dry plates went bad in the hands of the dealers. Eastman had then recalled and replaced all of them. “’Making good on those plates took our last dollar,’ he said. ‘But what was left was more important-reputation’” (Eastman). In 1883, Eastman startled everyone with the announcement of film in rolls. The rolls of film were adaptable with almost every plate camera in the world. IN 1884, the company was renamed Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company with 14 share-holders. In 1888, George invented the work ‘KODAK’ out of thin air because of his special liking to the letter ‘K’, and had it registered as a trademark. Then in 1889, it was shortened to The Eastman Company. Then in 1892, George took use of the word ‘KODAK’ and renamed the company ‘Eastman KODAK Company’.

Over the years ‘KODAK’ has made many advances in photography but have also had a few sat backs both financially and legally. In 1889, with the transparent roll of film finally perfected by Eastman and his chemists, it made it possible for the development of Thomas Edison’s motion picture camera in 1891. In 1895, the KODAK pocket camera was introduced which used the rolled film and had a small window in which you could see how many pictures were left. With the discovery of the X-ray process in 1896, KODAK entered into an agreement to supply the plates and paper for the machines. Finally in 1900, photography becomes financially accessible to everyone with the introduction