The Eastman Kodak Company, referred to simply as Kodak ( ), is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in film photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorporated in New Jersey. It is best known for photographic film products, which it brought to a mass market for the first time. Kodak began as a partnership between George Eastman and Henry A. Strong to develop a film roll camera. After the release of the Kodak camera, Eastman Kodak was incorporated on May 23, 1892. Under Eastman's direction, the company became one of the world's largest film and camera manufacturers, and also developed a model of welfare capitalism and a close relationship with the city of Rochester. During most of the 20th century, Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film, and produced several technological innovations through heavy investment in research and development at Kodak Research Laboratories. Kodak produced some of the most popular camera models of the 20th century, including the Brownie and Instamatic. 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 increasing competition from Fujifilm. The company also struggled with the transition from film to digital photography, even though Kodak had invented integral color image sensors and had developed the first self-contained digital camera prototype in the mid-1970s. Attempts to diversify its chemical operations failed, and as a turnaround strategy in the 2000s, Kodak instead made an aggressive turn to digital photography and digital printing. These strategies failed to improve the company's finances, and in January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. In September 2013, the company emerged from bankruptcy, having shed its large legacy liabilities, restructured, and exited several businesses. Since emerging from bankruptcy, Kodak has continued to provide commercial digital printing products and services, motion picture film, and still film, the last of which was distributed through the spinoff company Kodak Alaris until 2026. The company has licensed the Kodak brand to several products produced by other companies, such as the PIXPRO line of digital cameras manufactured by JK Imaging, and in the 2020s has expanded into the health sector with the opening of a pharmaceuticals production facility.
History
Name The letter k was a favorite of George Eastman's; he is quoted as saying, "it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter." He and his mother, Maria, 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 trademark requirements. It was short and euphonious and likely to stick in the public mind." The Kodak name was trademarked by Eastman in 1888.
Founding
Eastman entered a partnership with Henry Strong in 1880, and the Eastman Dry Plate Company was founded on January 1, 1881, with Strong as president and Eastman as treasurer. Initially, the company sold dry plates for cameras, but Eastman's interest turned to replacing glass plates altogether with a new roll film process. On October 1, 1884, the company was re-incorporated as the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. In 1885, Eastman patented the first practical film roll holder with William Walker, which would allow dry plate cameras to store multiple exposures in a camera simultaneously. That same year, Eastman patented a form of paper film he called "American film". Eastman would continue experimenting with cameras and hired chemist Henry Reichenbach to improve the film. These experiments would culminate in an 1889 patent for nitrocellulose film. As the company continued to grow, it was reincorporated several more times. In November 1889, it was renamed the Eastman Company, and 10,000 shares of stock were issued for $100. On May 23, 1892, another round of capitalization occurred and it was renamed Eastman Kodak. An Eastman Kodak of New Jersey was established in 1901 and existed simultaneously with the Eastman Kodak of New York until 1936, when the New York corporation was dissolved and its assets were transferred to the New Jersey corporation. Kodak remains incorporated in New Jersey today, although its headquarters is in Rochester.
The Kodak camera
In 1888, the Kodak camera was patented by Eastman. It was a box camera with a fixed-focus lens on the front and no viewfinder; two V shape silhouettes at the top aided in aiming in the direction of the subject. At the top, it had a rotating key to advance the film, a pull-string to set the shutter, and a button on the side to release it, exposing the celluloid film. Inside, it had a rotating bar to operate the shutter. When the user pressed the button to take a photograph, an inner rope was tightened and the exposure began. Once the photograph had been taken, the user had to rotate the upper key to change the selected frame within the celluloid tape. The $25 camera came pre-loaded with a film roll of 100 exposures, and could be mailed to Eastman's headquarters in Rochester with $10 for processing. The camera would be returned with prints, negatives, and a new roll of film. Additional rolls were also sold for $2 to professional photographers who wished to develop their own photographs. By unburdening the photographer from the complicated and expensive process of film development, photography became more accessible than ever before. The camera was an immediate success with the public and launched a fad of amateur photography. Eastman's advertising slogan, "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest", soon entered the public lexicon, and was referenced by Chauncey Depew in a speech and Gilbert and Sullivan in their opera Utopia, Limited.
Expansion
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
