George Eastman- the man who put the camera in our hands

Introduction

For this week’s second assignment we were to research and write a report about a chosen theme, and I chose to write about George Eastman and the beginning of the Kodak Camera and its history. I chose this topic because I wanted to learn more about it, and I think it is important because the Kodak Camera has made a huge footprint in our history.

George discovering the camera

George Eastman was born in 1854 and is the inventor of the Kodak Camera and the camera roll. Already by the age of three when having his photo taken, he was fascinated by the art of photography.

In 1877 Eastman was 23 years old and walked in a photo supply store looking for a camera in Roch-ester New York. He wanted to take pictures of land he wanted to buy. He worked in a bank, and many of the wealthy customers in the bank worked in real estate so he started thinking about working in real estate too.

Eastman discovered while taking photos of land that the use of chemicals for taking photos was messy and difficult and wanted to discover if there was another way.

Eastman worked all day at the bank, and when he got home to his mother, he started a prosses of trying to make dry plates in his mother’s kitchen. He poured the chemicals on the glass and baked the glass in the oven. He tested the plates by taking pictures of the houses across the street from where he lived. A local photographer saw these pictures and bought the plates from Eastman and recommended Eastman to the Anthony company, a leading photo supply store in New York. The Anthony Company distributed photo supplies interna-tionally and found Eastman very interesting for their company.

Inventing the dry plates

Eastman studied international photo journals and discovered some British photographers that experimented with dry plates, precoated so the chemicals could be left at home.

Eastman was determined to make his own dry plates. He didn`t know much about chemis-try but this couldn`t stop him in reaching his goal in making a successful business.

After a while the factory got heavy competi-tion from other dry plate company’s, and since Eastman didn`t have any chemical education it was difficult for him to compete with the bigger companies. He then hired Henry Reichenbach, a science student at the university of Rochester to make better emulsions for the dry plates.

The camera roll

Eastman’s next project was to replace the heavy and not so practical glass plates and thought that his idea would was revo-lutionary. In 1885 he made paper rolls covered with emulsion, and then attached them to another invention- a paper holder that fit onto the back of a camera. Pho-tographers now didn`t need to change a glass plate for every picture, but just roll the paper roll to the next picture. The paper roll wasn`t that big of a success to make photographers buy them instead of glass plates. The paper film didn`t make the best pictures and the poor quality made Eastman feel that he had failed. His company spent some years surviving on providing photo finishing and selling paper to print photos on.

Inventing the Kodak

In 1885 he came up with another idea, what if he made a camera so simple to handle that anyone could use it. And if the camera was for ordinary peo-ple, maybe they wouldn`t be so fuzzy about the quality of the pictures and he could insert the camera with the paper roll and paper holder. Eastman hired a nearby cabinet maker to build a box for the cameras body. He had local machinist make a shutter that could take a picture at a fracture of a second, and for the lens he contacted some German immigrants in Rochester who run a small optical shop, Bausch and Lomb.

“You press the button and we do the rest”

In 1888 Eastman started advertising and selling the first Kodak Cameras.

The camera was very easy to use and had few movable parts. The phrase “you press the button and we do the rest” was born.

The camera roll had 100 pictures on it. When the roll was full, the whole camera was shipped to Rochester and the film was developed. The Kodak, pictures and new camera roll were sent back to the customers.

The Kodak Name

The Kodak name was also invented by its inventor. Eastman liked the letter K and came up with the name playing around with different letter combinations. He wanted the name to be short, have no other meaning or association, and the same pronun-ciation in every language.The pictures taken by the camera also had its own name, a snapshot. Kodak, a great success

A year after introducing the Kodak, Eastman had sold 13 000 Kodaks, and his factory was developing over 6000 photographs every day.

For the next ten years Kodak cam-eras were high in demand and East-man decided to expand his business and opened factories and distribu-tion centers around the world.Eastman knew that he would get competition from other compa-nies and hired researchers to keep Kodak a step ahead of the other companies selling cameras. He made the Brownie camera that was even easier to use and sold it for one dollar instead of 25 dollars. He simplified the developing process and that way they could save money and sell cameras for less. Now almost every family could afford the camera, and without this invention the world would look quite different today.

Sources

https://snl.no/George_Eastman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gWp00fr4I0

https://www.thoughtco.com/george-eastman-history-of-kodak-1991619

https://www.biography.com/inventor/george-eastman

https://no.pinterest.com/pin/762726886861244802/?autologin=true

https://www.eastman.org/george-eastman-legacy

https://www.kodak.com/ek/my/en/corp/aboutus/heritage/georgeeastman/default.htm