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| Kodak |
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of Claire Fontaine, one of her best and closest friends. Claire is a great photographer and designer.
They love photography and they like talking about photography and take photos. They have been talking about the Eastman Kodak Company, the American public company, a trademark that was registered by George Eastman who received a patent for his camera that uses roll film on a day like today in 1888.
The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak, is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography.
The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications, and professional services for businesses around the world. Its main business segments are Print Systems, Enterprise Inkjet Systems, Micro 3D Printing and Packaging, Software and Solutions, and Consumer and Film. It is best known for photographic film products.
Kodak was founded by George Eastman and Henry A. Strong on September 4, 1888. During most of the 20th century, Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film. The company's ubiquity was such that its Kodak moment tagline entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event that deserved to be recorded for posterity.
Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s, as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in moving to digital photography, despite developing the first self-contained digital camera. As a part of a turnaround strategy, Kodak began to focus on digital photography and digital printing, and attempted to generate revenues through aggressive patent litigation.
More information: Kodak
In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Shortly thereafter Kodak announced that it would stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames and focus on the corporate digital imaging market.
Digital cameras are still sold under the Kodak brand by JK Imaging Ltd under an agreement with Kodak. In August 2012, Kodak announced its intention to sell its photographic film, commercial scanners and kiosk operations, as a measure to emerge from bankruptcy, but not its motion picture film operations.
In January 2013, the Court approved financing for Kodak to emerge from bankruptcy by mid 2013.
Kodak sold many of its patents for approximately $525,000,000 to a group of
companies including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft,
Samsung, Adobe Systems, and HTC under the names Intellectual Ventures
and RPX Corporation.
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| Kodak |
On September 3, 2013, the company emerged from bankruptcy having shed its large legacy liabilities and exited several businesses. Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging are now part of Kodak Alaris, a separate company owned by the UK-based Kodak Pension Plan.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020 Kodak announced it would begin production of pharmaceutical materials.
The letter k was a favorite of Eastman's; he is quoted as saying, it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. He and his mother devised the name Kodak using an Anagrams set. Eastman said that there were three principal concepts he used in creating the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce, and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else.
According to a 1920 ad, the name was simply invented -made up from letters of the alphabet to meet our trade-mark requirements. It was short and euphonious and likely to stick in the public mind.
From the company's founding by George Eastman in 1888, Kodak followed the razor and blades business model of selling inexpensive cameras and making large margins from consumables -film, chemicals, and paper. As late as 1976, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the U.S.
Kodak developed and patented the first handheld digital camera in 1975.
More information: Eastman Museum
George Eastman (July 12, 1854-March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.
Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film stock in 1888 by the world's first filmmakers Eadweard Muybridge and Louis Le Prince, and a few years later by their followers Léon Bouly, William Kennedy Dickson, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers, and Georges Méliès.
He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and in London Eastman Dental Hospital; contributing to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the construction of several buildings at the second campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Charles River.
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| George Eastman (left) |
In addition, he made
major donations to Tuskegee University and Hampton University,
historically black universities in the South. With interests in
improving health, he provided funds for clinics in London and other
European cities to serve low-income residents.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. On March 14, 1932, Eastman shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, To my friends: my work is done. Why wait? GE.
The George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Eastman is the only person represented by two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing the same achievement, for his invention of roll film.
Eastman was born in Waterville, New York as the youngest child of George Washington Eastman and Maria Eastman (née Kilbourn), at the 10-acre farm which his parents had bought in 1849. He had two older sisters, Ellen Maria and Katie. He was largely self-educated, although he attended a private school in Rochester after the age of eight.
More information: India Today
In the early 1840s his father had started a business school, the Eastman Commercial College in Rochester, New York. The city became one of the first boomtowns in the United States, based on rapid industrialization. As his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm and moved to Rochester in 1860. His father died of a brain disorder in May 1862. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders.
The second daughter, Katie, had contracted polio when young and died in late 1870 when George was 15 years old. The young George left school early and started working to help support the family. As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him.
In 1884, Eastman patented the first film in roll form to prove practicable; he had been tinkering at home to develop it.
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| George Eastman |
In 1888, he developed the Kodak camera -Kodak being a word Eastman created-, which was the first camera designed to use roll film. He coined the advertising slogan, You press the button, we do the rest which quickly became popular among customers.
In 1889 he first offered film stock, and by 1896 became the leading supplier of film stock internationally. He incorporated his company under the name Eastman Kodak, in 1892.
As film stock became standardized, Eastman continued to lead in innovations. Refinements in colored film stock continued after his death.
In an era of growing trade union activities, Eastman sought to counter the union movement by devising worker benefit programs, including, in 1910, the establishment of a profit-sharing program for all employees. Considered to be a progressive leader for the times, Eastman promoted Florence McAnaney to be head of the personnel department. She was one of the first women to hold an executive position in a major U.S. company.
Eastman was associated with the Kodak company in an administrative and a business executive capacity until his death; he contributed much to the development of its notable research facilities. In 1911 he founded the Eastman Trust and Savings Bank.
In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. He had trouble standing, and his walk became a slow shuffle. Today, it might be diagnosed as a form of degenerative disease such as disc herniations from trauma or age causing either painful nerve root compressions, or perhaps a type of lumbar spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by calcification in the vertebrae.
More information: Google Arts & Culture
Eastman suffered from depression due to his pain, reduced ability to function, and also since he had witnessed his mother's suffering from pain. On March 14, 1932, Eastman died by suicide with a single gunshot through the heart. His suicide note read, To my friends, my work is done-Why wait? GE.
Raymond Granger, an insurance salesman in Rochester, was visiting to collect insurance payments from several members of the staff. He arrived at the scene to find the workforce in a dither. At least one chronicler said that fear of senility or other debilitating diseases of old age was a contributing factor.
Eastman's funeral was held at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester; his coffin was carried out to Charles Gounod's Marche Romaine and buried in the grounds of the company he founded, at what is now known as Eastman Business Park.
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| The Grandma visited Kodak |
Being an astute business man, Eastman focused his company on making film when competition heated up in the camera industry. By providing quality and affordable film to every camera manufacturer, Kodak managed to turn its competitors into de facto business partners.
In 1915, Eastman founded a bureau of municipal research in Rochester to get things done for the community and to serve as an independent, non-partisan agency for keeping citizens informed. Called the Center for Governmental Research, the agency continues to carry out that mission.
During his lifetime, Eastman donated $100 million to various organizations, with most of his money going to the University of Rochester and to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to build their programs and facilities, under the alias "Mr. Smith". He was one of the major philanthropists in the United States during his lifetime.
The Rochester Institute of Technology has a building dedicated to Eastman, in recognition of his support and substantial donations. MIT installed a plaque of Eastman on one of the buildings he funded. Students rub the nose of Eastman's image on the plaque for good luck.
Eastman also made substantial gifts to the Tuskegee Institute and the Hampton Institute in Alabama and Virginia, respectively.
More information: PBS
Security Trust Company of Rochester was the executor of Eastman's estate. His entire estate was bequeathed to the University of Rochester. The Eastman Quadrangle of the River Campus of the University of Rochester was named for him.
Eastman had built a mansion at 900 East Avenue in Rochester. Here he entertained friends to dinner and held private music concerts. The University of Rochester used the mansion for various purposes for decades after his death.
In 1949, it re-opened after having been adapted for use as the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark, and is now known as the George Eastman Museum.
Eastman's boyhood home was saved from destruction. It was restored to its state during his childhood and is displayed at the Genesee Country Village and Museum.
More information: News Australia
Light makes photography. Embrace light.
Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light.
Know it for all you are worth,
and you will know the key to photography.
George Eastman
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