George Eastman made photography a push of a button for everyone
Before 1888, taking a photograph meant handling chemicals yourself. George Eastman, a former bank clerk, sold a roll-film camera and promised customers that if they pressed the button, Kodak would handle the rest. He also realised the real money lay in selling film, not cameras.
Eastman was born on 12 July 1854 in Waterville, New York, the youngest child of a family farm. His father ran a business school in Rochester, and the family moved there in 1860, but he died in 1862, and Eastman's mother took in lodgers to pay for schooling. After his sister Katie died in 1870, the fifteen-year-old left school to earn money, later vowing to repay his mother for her hardships.
Working as a bank clerk in the 1870s, he took up photography and by 1879 had built a machine for coating dry plates. In 1881 he and Henry Strong founded the Eastman Dry Plate Company, with Eastman as treasurer running most of the business. He patented a film roll in 1885, and three years later launched the Kodak camera, a name he invented. Separating picture-taking from developing made the device an instant hit, and orders outran supply by that August.
Kodak then sold good, cheap film to every camera maker, effectively turning rivals into partners. Chasing a monopoly through patents and acquisitions, it led world film supply by 1896 and by 1915 was Rochester's largest employer, with more than 8,000 workers. The Brownie camera targeted children, and Eastman funded colour experiments from 1904. To head off unions he introduced a welfare fund in 1910 and profit-sharing for all staff in 1912.
Eastman never married and stayed close to his mother, who died in 1907. He gave fortunes away: the Eastman School of Music, medical and dental schools at the University of Rochester, buildings at MIT, and support for Tuskegee and Hampton universities, plus clinics for poorer residents of London and other European cities. Suffering severe spinal pain in his last two years, he took his own life on 14 March 1932, leaving a note saying his work was done.
Source: George Eastman
