The Rise & Fall of the Kodak Empire:
Part 1: How Kodak came to dominate the photographic industry
By Jason Schneider
Everybody knows the sad story of the Eastman Kodak Co., the formidable Rochester N.Y- based enterprise founded by George Eastman in 1892 that grew to dominate what was then known as the photographic industry for well over a century before running aground on the shoals of the Digital Revolution in the early 2000s. Kodak, the once mighty behemoth that held a 71% share of the U.S. film market, and an astonishing 50% share of worldwide film sales was forced into Chapter 11 (a reorganizational bankruptcy) on January 19, 2012 to settle outstanding debts, with the goal of emerging as “a lean world-class digital imaging and materials science company.” Kodak has largely achieved these goals and more and is still a leading film manufacturer in what has become a vibrant niche market, but it’s a mere shadow of its former self. At its height Kodak had more than 125,000 employees worldwide and annual profits of around $16 Billion; in 2023 the company had about 4,000 employees in 34 different countries, and (by most measures) profits ran in the $100 Millions.
The most widespread explanations for Kodak’s failure to maintain its unmatched position of dominance going forward are all based on some version of the time-honored maxim, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” According to countless articles in magazines, newspapers, financial publications, and online posts, the top execs at Kodak simply did not foresee the vast upside potential of digital imaging, stubbornly clung to film due to its insanely high profit margin (70%- 80%) and its central role in the corporate culture. Furthermore, they blocked the development of key aspects digital imaging technology by underfunding any project that might conceivably “hurt film,” the corporate “cash cow” that provided the financial underpinning for Kodak’s hugely diverse range of technologies, products and services. Finally, even those Kodak execs that clearly foresaw the transition from film to digital capture got the timeline wrong. They assumed it would be a gradual transition taking place over a decade or more, giving them time to adapt and develop transitional hybrid products that would effectively extend the life of film. But at the dawn of the Digital Era, film sales unexpectedly spiked before falling off the cliff after 2004.
While plausible and compelling this facile explanation of Kodak’s decline is, at best, simplistic, and at worst, misleading. Whatever its reluctance to fully embrace digital imaging, Kodak was a major player in developing digital technology worldwide and advancing digital solutions across a broad spectrum. Indeed, as digital imaging was gaining steam at the turn of the 21st century Kodak was the world’s leading producer of digital cameras! If the company erred, it was in getting into specific areas and products (including cameras) too early, and then pulling out as soon they didn’t immediately generate profits. This failure of commitment and consistency allowed other companies such as Fuji, Nikon, Canon, and Sony. to step in and create competitive products. The full story in all its fascinating complexities will (hopefully) be revealed in The Decline and Fall of the Kodak Empire, Part 2. How the Colossus of Film was broken by a disruptive technology.

George Eastman, c.1890 on shipboard with his Kodak camera.
George Eastman: The Marketing Genius who created Eastman Kodak
George Eastman was able to transform his relatively small but successful Eastman Dry Plate & Film Company of 1884 into the largest, most profitable photographic company in the world by the turn of the 20th century because he was a visionary, an astute businessman, and a consummate corporate executive. An inspired tinkerer like Thomas A. Edison, Eastman was mechanically adept and clever, but his true genius was in marketing and executive leadership. He intuitively understood that photography, then a “complicated” avocation pursued by highly trained geeks in dark rooms full of smelly and often toxic chemicals, had incredible mass market potential just waiting be tapped. So, aided by talented engineers, he conceived and helped design a simple fixed focus box camera with a fixed aperture and shutter speed, that enabled virtually anyone to take sharp handheld pictures of objects from about 6 feet to infinity in bright sunlight.

Patent illustration for original Kodak of 1888 lists George Eastman as the inventor, but he had help.
Eastman called his camera “The Kodak,” a purely conceptual name chosen because it was simple, strong, memorable, easy to pronounce in any language, and not associated with anything else. It was pre-loaded with enough film for 100 circular format exposures each measuring 2-1/2 inches in diameter on 70mm wide roll film. When you finished the roll you shipped your Kodak back to the factory in Rochester, NY and it was returned with your prints and reloaded with a fresh roll of film for the grand sum of $10 (equal to $331 today).
What the Kodak offered, for the then-handsome sum of $25 ($828.14 in 2024 dollars), was an unintimidating, easy-to use, portable camera with no adjustments that allowed ordinary people without any training or previous experience to take satisfying pictures of friends, family, pets, or anything else they wanted to remember. In the context of the 19th century, the Kodak was the world’s first successful point-and-shoot camera. It doesn’t qualify as the first one-time-use camera because you got your original camera back, but it was the camera that created the modern photofinishing industry.

The Kodak of 1888 with film chamber removed shows it spartan simplicity. Note the 2-1/2-inch diameter circular film aperture for round pix.
The Kodak camera alone established George Eastman as one of the greatest conceptual and marketing geniuses of all time. The actual patent for the Kodak (Patent 388,850, September 4, 1888) bears his name, but it incorporates ideas used in Eastman’s Detective Camera of 1886 and Eastman-Walker roll holder of 1885. The Kodak, initially manufactured for The Eastman Dry Plate & Film Co. by Frank Brownell of Rochester, New York is a wooden-bodied box camera clad in Turkey Morocco with “nickel and brass trimmings and enclosed in a neat sole leather case with shoulder strap.” Described as “about the size of a large field glass” it measures 3-1/4 x 3-1/4 x 6-1/2 inches and weighs 1lb. 10 oz. It has no frame counter-you had to count the number of turns when winding the film-advance key using an exposure indexing mark on the top of the camera, and record the number of exposure on a furnished exposure card! The Kodak no viewfinder—you aimed it with the aid of two lines, in a V pattern, engraved into the top. The lens, contained in a unique barrel-type shutter that revolved on an axis parallel to the film plane, was a 57mm f/9 Rapid Rectilinear. Based on the format it was a wide-angle, which gave good depth of field, but image quality in the corners of the field would have been poor, so the “corner-less” circular format made sense. The shutter, which was manually cocked with a pull cord, provided a single shutter speed of about 1/25 sec, but a felt plug, which fit into the front port of the camera, could be used for making time exposures. The shutter-release button was on the left, and the film exposure indicator was on the top.
Despite its spartan simplicity, ample price, and the inconvenience of having to return the camera for processing, the Kodak was a phenomenal success because it was the first camera that enabled anyone to take pictures, and it was aggressively marketed with a brilliant advertising campaign. Eastman’s astute grasp of human psychology and motivation is evident in these quotes from an 1888 Kodak ad “Anybody who can wind a watch can use the Kodak Camera…No tripod, no focusing, no adjustment whatever…A picturesque diary of your trip…may be obtained without trouble that will be worth a hundred times its cost in after years.” In 1889, it was “1. Pull the cord 2. Turn the key 3. Press the button. And so on for 100 pictures.” This was later refined into the greatest photographic advertising slogan of all time, “You press the button, we do the rest.” Those too impatient to send their cameras to Rochester could buy darkroom-loadable 100-exposure film spools for $2 apiece, and develop and print their own film, or send the exposed film back to Rochester and have it processed and returned with a fresh roll for $10. While The Kodak was certainly clever, none of its features, except for the barrel shutter, was truly unique, but the concept of a stone simple roll film camera, squarely aimed at the middle-class masses, and the forward-looking marketing techniques used to promote it ultimately brought photography within the reach of hundreds of millions of people. More than any other camera, the Kodak helped to create the modern photographic industry by transforming the act of taking pictures into a universal human experience.

George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak Co. in 1917: The consummate CEO.
Kodak Brownie 1900. If any single camera can claim to have created the snapshot, that common, unpretentious memento of things as they are, it is the immortal Kodak Brownie box camera introduced to the world at the turn of the last century in February 1900. It was neither the first box camera, nor the first camera to use paper-backed roll film with numbers on the back (that was the 1892 Bull’s-Eye Camera made by the Boston Camera Company, later acquired by Kodak). However, by offering a simple, competent, easy-to-use, daylight-loadable camera at the then-unprecedented price of $1.00 and putting a brilliantly conceived mass-marketing program behind it, Kodak was literally able to sell a camera to practically everybody, and to motivate millions to buy it. The Brownie’s success was unprecedented—in the first year alone, over 150,000 cameras were shipped, three times the previous record. To get a clearer idea of the impact of the Brownie, check out one of the many timelines of the 20th century and go to the year 1900. Right up there, along with such momentous events as Max Planck’s quantum theory and the publication of Sigmund Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” is Kodak’s introduction of the $1 Brownie camera!

The original $1.00 Kodak Brownie of 1900 had no viewfinder, so Kodak offered this small accessory reflex finder for two bits. What a deal!
The Brownie got its name from artist Palmer Cox’s whimsical cartoon versions of Brownies--“hard-working Scottish sprites or elves who did household chores” --that were as popular in the 1880-1920 period as Mickey Mouse is today. The Brownie is about as simple and basic as a camera can get—an imitation-leather covered cardboard box, with wooden film carrier, measuring about 3 x 3 x 5 inches. It has a simple fixed-focus f/11 meniscus lens, and metal rotary shutter with a single speed of about 1/35-1/50 sec plus T. There isn’t even a viewfinder—like the original Kodak of 1888, sighting lines, in a V pattern, were inscribed on the top! Starting in July 1900, a small clip-on accessory reflex finder was offered for 25 cents! The film-winding key was detachable and often lost, which is why many original Brownies are found with soldered-on, non-standard keys. Despite its modest specs, the original Kodak Brownie did score one extremely important historical distinction—it pioneered No.117 film, thus making it the world’s first 2-1/4 x 2-1/4-inch roll film camera. Size 117 film, essentially 6-exposures of 120 film on a narrower-flanged roll, is long defunct, but the glorious 2-1/4 square roll film format (in the 120 size) is still very much alive.
The Brownie was certainly the right product at the right time, at the right price with a catchy name. But what really transformed it into an enduring American icon that sired generations of Kodak Brownies up until the ‘70s and inspired countless competitors worldwide, was Kodak’s ingenious and aggressive marketing plan. It was advertised in popular magazines rather than trade magazines. Ads stressed it could be “operated by any school-boy or girl” and kids were urged to join The Brownie Camera Club, which had no initiation fee, and whose object was “to increase the interest of American boys and girls in matters pertaining to photography.” Kodak ran picture contests and awarded prizes. A roll of film, called a “Transparent-Film Cartridge, 6 exposures 2-1/4 x 2-1/4” cost 15 cents, a box of paper, 10 cents, and a Brownie Developing and Printing Outfit, 75 cents. At the bottom of many ads was a small box with the message “Send a dollar to your local Kodak Dealer for a Brownie Camera. If there is no dealer in your area, send us a dollar and we will ship the camera promptly.” With the arrival of the Brownie, anyone could take photographs of everything from special occasions to everyday life and do so inexpensively. The era of the snapshot had arrived, and the world would never be the same.
1912: Kodak establishes one of the first corporate Research Centers in the United States. Dedicated to pure research on emerging technologies as well as specific projects to improve existing products, this facility in Rochester, New York was a testament to Kodak’s open-ended commitment to research. Ultimately it enabled the company to maintain its dominant position in everything from film to cameras and lenses, to chemicals and materials, and as a pioneer in digital imaging.
1914: Kodak settles patent suit for $5 million (5% of Eastman’s fortune).
In 1914, after a protracted patent dispute with the estate of Hannibal Goodwin, a New Jersey clergyman who filed the first patent for flexible film, was settled in Goodwin’s favor. It had been used in countless cameras worldwide and in Kodak films, the major source of Kodak’s profits. The decision was a major blow to Eastman personally, and to Eastman Kodak, but fortunately occurring at a time when Kodak was expanding rapidly and could sustain the loss. Unfortunately, in 1985 when a federal judge ruled that Kodak had violated Polaroid's patents for instant photography, Kodak was in a much more precarious financial position and the payout of nearly $1 Billion hastened Kodak’s demise.
Landmark Kodak Cameras: Brilliant innovations that helped sell film!
Kodak 3A Special of 1916: First camera with built-in coupled rangefinder
From the 1890’s to 1960 Kodak produced about 200 different folding cameras that used a bellows to allow the camera to be relatively compact when folded. Kodak roll-film-format folders ranged from 6-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches to 828 Bantam (28 x 40mm), and included 35mm models like the Retina and Retinette, Kodak Instant Picture Cameras, and the last of the breed, the made-in-the-UK Kodak 66 models of 1958-1960. Technically one of the most interesting was the Kodak 3A Special of 1916, the world’s first camera to include a coupled rangefinder—a “3-band” split image device built into the front standard. Fitted with high quality lenses and multi-speed shutters, this top-of the line model provided a postcard format (3-1/4 x 5-1/2 inches on 122 film) and sold for about $30. Later Autographic models used A-122 film enabling captions to be written on the film with an included stylus, and some military versions were used during WWI. The 3A Special proves that Kodak was in the technological forefront of sophisticated camera innovations even prior to 1920.
The 35mm cartridge: a simple but necessary innovation
In 1934, Kodak announced the standard 35mm cartridge, that, with relatively minor variations (such as crimped, non-replaceable end caps) is still in production. While perhaps not a technological tour de force, the basic concept of the standard 35mm cartridge has endured for 90 years (so far) and is a major factor in the success of the 35mm format.

Original 1935 Kodachrome fiilm box, cartridge, canister, and mailer. Note postal charge of 1-1/2 cents!
Kodachrome: The best color transparency film ever?
In 1935 Kodak brought forth Kodachrome, which, in its improved (1938 to 2009) versions, is widely regarded as the finest color transparency and positive cine film ever made. It was discontinued in 2009, and processing was phased out in 2010. It is doubtful that any company other than Kodak could have produced and processed a film of such exquisite complexity at such a scale. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Kodak Retina l of 1934 was the first camera designed to take Kodak's new 35mm cartridge. Made in Germany it sired the scale-focusing line.
Kodak Retina I (Type 117), 1934. The first of the long-running Kodak Retina series (1934-1969) made by Kodak A.G. Stuttgart, Germany (formerly Dr. August Nagel Camerawerk), the Retina I was the first camera to use the newly developed 35mm cartridge and was thus a factor in the explosive growth of 35mm photography. Though the Retina I is a scale-focusing folding camera of conventional design, is very well made, and was fitted with high quality Schneider or Kodak lenses in Compur shutters. That’s why it remained in production in mildly updated form (the Retina 1a) until 1954. A paragon of straightforward simplicity, the prewar Retina I was most often fitted with an uncoated 50mm f/3/5 Schneider Xenar lens in a 1-1/500 sec plus T and B Compur-Rapid shutter.
Kodak Super Six-20, 1938. The world’s first series-production autoexposure (AE) still camera, the Super Six-20 was nearly 20 years ahead of its time, but it nevertheless exerted a profound influence on camera makers as a technological benchmark. With advances in electronics and metering technology, the concept of autoexposure took the photographic world by storm after WWII, and was ultimately developed into today’s sophisticated, through-the-lens, multi-pattern, multimode autoexposure systems. Understandably, Kodak introduced the Super Six-20 with considerable fanfare at the then-staggering price of $225 (about half the price of a new 1938 Ford). A strikingly handsome folding roll film camera of futuristic post-deco clamshell design, it produced eight 2/14x3-1/4 images per roll of 620 film, features a front-cell-focusing Tessar-formula 100mm f/ 3.5 Kodak Anastigmat Special lens, and a giant 3-3/4 x 3/4-inch selenium cell under a metal “awning” just below the rangefinder and separate viewfinder. On the left side of the front standard, there’s a manual-override aperture scale calibrated from f/3.5 to f/22. Set it to the unmarked “automatic” setting past the f/22 mark and you can see a little comb-toothed bar. As you press the right-hand shutter-release- slide inward, a moving needle (which is coupled to the three-bladed iris diaphragm) becomes trapped between the teeth on the bar. Thus, Kodak originated the trapped-needle system of automatic aperture control that was used (in refined form) on many later shutter-priority AE SLRs. This system had its limitations: It was based on a single film speed (ASA 32), only worked with shutter speeds from 1/25 to 1/200 sec (though the Super Six-20’s Kodak-made leaf shutter has speeds down to 1 sec), did not do well in dim light, and was no paragon of reliability. Considering its limitations Kodak’s engineers wisely designed a complete range of manual control options into the camera.

Kodak Super Six-20: The world's first autoexposure camera had real style, a great lens, a great rangefinder, and a so-so autoexposure system.
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Other fascinating features of this landmark machine include one of the longest based (3-1/8 inch), most accurate, superimposed-image rangefinders ever fitted to a roll film camera. robust, rigid, double-sided spring-loaded braces to support the front standard, double-exposure prevention (but no automatic film stop), a shutter speed scale oddly placed in the top section of the folding “clamshell,” and a system of meter cell masks to compensate for exposures made with filters. The lens, which focuses down to 4 feet, is capable of very sharp results. Fewer than 1000 Super Six-20s had been built when the camera went out of production in1945, and while it was a great image-builder that demonstrated Kodak’s technological prowess, it was not a great success in the marketplace.
Kodak Ektra ,1941. This was Kodak’s audacious attempt to build the finest interchangeable-lens 35mm rangefinder camera the world had ever seen, and they poured an enormous amount of resources into the project. The result, designed primarily by Joseph Mihaly, was technically brilliant, spectacular, and in many ways functional, but it was also extraordinarily complex, expensive to manufacture, and it featured a left-handed shutter release, film-advance crank, and front-mounted focusing wheel! The Ektra’s amazing features include: A 4-1/8-inch-base, high magnification, full-military-spec split-image rangefinder, varifocal dioptric viewfinder providing auto parallax compensation with breech-lock bayonet lenses from 35mm to 153mm, interchangeable film magazines with built-in, two-stroke film-advance lever and folding rewind crank, and a rubberized cloth focal-plane shutter with fast-and slow-speed dials providing speeds of 1-1/1000 sec plus B. Standard lens was a superb 50mm f/1.9 or f/3.5 Ektar. Since Kodak officially sold only 2,490 Ektras to the public before it was discontinued in 1948 and each one used 667 different parts made of 88 different materials in its construction, Kodak evidently lost a pile of money on the project. Ektras are unreliable picture takers (the shutter was never perfected and the film backs are trouble prone) but it is a magnificent and beautifully made collectible that is a testament to Kodak’s capabilites and lofty asperations.

The ill-fated Kodak Ektra of the '40s had a plethora of advanced features, a mil spec split-image rangefinder, and a duff shutter!
Kodak Retina IIIC 1958. The ultimate folding rangefinder 35 and the last full-production rangefinder Retina camera, this elegant, beautifully made classic features component-interchangeable lenses by Schneider Kreuznach or Rodenstock---the rear optical group behind the shutter stays put, and front components for 50mm normal, 35mm wide-angle and 80mm tele can be switched. The IIIC features a large, bright multi-frame range/viewfinder, built-in uncoupled selenium meter, Synchro-Compur MX shutter with speeds of 1-1/500 sec plus B, and a bottom-mounted wind lever. Readily available used, they’re superb collectibles and excellent picture takers. Normal lenses: 50mm f/2 Schneider Xenon or 50mm f/2 Rodenstock Heligon.

Kodak Retina IIIC, last of the folding Retinas, had a large multi-frame viwfinder, ucoupled selnium meter, and interchangable lens components including 50mm f/2 Schneider Xenon shown on camera.
Kodak Instamatic 100 1963. The first of a long line of Kodak Instamatic cameras, the simple, basic Instamatic 100 was a simple, snapshot camera based on the Kodapak 126 cartridge, an easy-loading system that was virtually foolproof and eliminated the need to thread the film leader onto a take-up spool. The plastic 126 cartridge, which only fit into the camera when correctly oriented, provided a nominal 28x28mm format on paper-backed 35mm film that was masked down to an actual format size of 26.5mm square. The film featured one registration hole (perforation) per image, and frame numbers were read out in a small window at the rear of the cartridge. The system was enormously successful---by 1970 Kodak alone had manufactured over 50-million Instamatics—and dozens of camera-making companies in the U.S., Japan, and Germany offered 126 cartridge cameras, mostly simple snapshot cameras, but many with more advanced features. Kodak, Rollei, Zeiss-Ikon, and Ricoh even fielded interchangeable lens 126 SLRs, though their performance, especially with fast lenses was limited by the 126 cartridge’s inherent limitations in providing good film flatness. It was probably the technical success of easy-loading, fully automatic 35mm point-and-shoot cameras in the late ‘70s that hastened the demise of the format, and the system petered out in the ‘80s. Kodak ceased manufacturing 126 Instamatic cartridges in 2000.

The cute little plastic-bodied Instamatic 100 features a fixed-focus 43mm f/11 acrylic lens, a simple 2-speed (1/40 and 1/90 sec) shutter, top-mounted film-wind lever, and a pop-up flash designed for baseless AG-1 flashbulbs, and sold for $15.95 list. It provided the basis for an extensive series of Instamatics with spring motor drive, flash cube sockets, rangefinders, faster lenses, and much more.

Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20 of 1972, shown with Magicube on top, was the first camera to use the 110 cartridge. It had a great lens!
Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20, 1972. This was the first camera to use the instant-loading 110 cartridge, smaller than the original 126 Instamatic cartridge of 1963, that provided improved film flatness and a 13x17mm format. Some see Kodak’s introduction of 110 as an attempt to wrest a lucrative 16mm subminiature market from the Japanese and the Germans, but the flat, pocketable 110 camera concept was really intended to make cameras more portable and thus increase picture taking, and to lower film production costs. The Pocket Instamatic 20 was a simple fixed-focus snapshot camera, but Kodak and others were soon producing more sophisticated 110 rangefinder models, and even 110 SLRs with zoom and interchangeable lenses. In under three years over 25-million 110 cameras were sold, and sales ultimately amounted to 4 billion dollars. The 110-craze peaked in the mid ‘70s and lasted until the early ‘80s. The nicely made Pocket Instamatic 20 had a sliding lens cover, bright-line optical finder, Magicube socket, two-speed shutter, tripod socket, and a plastic 3-element 26mm f/9.5 lens that performed remarkably well.
Part 1: How Kodak came to dominate the photographic industry
By Jason Schneider
Everybody knows the sad story of the Eastman Kodak Co., the formidable Rochester N.Y- based enterprise founded by George Eastman in 1892 that grew to dominate what was then known as the photographic industry for well over a century before running aground on the shoals of the Digital Revolution in the early 2000s. Kodak, the once mighty behemoth that held a 71% share of the U.S. film market, and an astonishing 50% share of worldwide film sales was forced into Chapter 11 (a reorganizational bankruptcy) on January 19, 2012 to settle outstanding debts, with the goal of emerging as “a lean world-class digital imaging and materials science company.” Kodak has largely achieved these goals and more and is still a leading film manufacturer in what has become a vibrant niche market, but it’s a mere shadow of its former self. At its height Kodak had more than 125,000 employees worldwide and annual profits of around $16 Billion; in 2023 the company had about 4,000 employees in 34 different countries, and (by most measures) profits ran in the $100 Millions.
The most widespread explanations for Kodak’s failure to maintain its unmatched position of dominance going forward are all based on some version of the time-honored maxim, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” According to countless articles in magazines, newspapers, financial publications, and online posts, the top execs at Kodak simply did not foresee the vast upside potential of digital imaging, stubbornly clung to film due to its insanely high profit margin (70%- 80%) and its central role in the corporate culture. Furthermore, they blocked the development of key aspects digital imaging technology by underfunding any project that might conceivably “hurt film,” the corporate “cash cow” that provided the financial underpinning for Kodak’s hugely diverse range of technologies, products and services. Finally, even those Kodak execs that clearly foresaw the transition from film to digital capture got the timeline wrong. They assumed it would be a gradual transition taking place over a decade or more, giving them time to adapt and develop transitional hybrid products that would effectively extend the life of film. But at the dawn of the Digital Era, film sales unexpectedly spiked before falling off the cliff after 2004.
While plausible and compelling this facile explanation of Kodak’s decline is, at best, simplistic, and at worst, misleading. Whatever its reluctance to fully embrace digital imaging, Kodak was a major player in developing digital technology worldwide and advancing digital solutions across a broad spectrum. Indeed, as digital imaging was gaining steam at the turn of the 21st century Kodak was the world’s leading producer of digital cameras! If the company erred, it was in getting into specific areas and products (including cameras) too early, and then pulling out as soon they didn’t immediately generate profits. This failure of commitment and consistency allowed other companies such as Fuji, Nikon, Canon, and Sony. to step in and create competitive products. The full story in all its fascinating complexities will (hopefully) be revealed in The Decline and Fall of the Kodak Empire, Part 2. How the Colossus of Film was broken by a disruptive technology.

George Eastman, c.1890 on shipboard with his Kodak camera.
George Eastman: The Marketing Genius who created Eastman Kodak
George Eastman was able to transform his relatively small but successful Eastman Dry Plate & Film Company of 1884 into the largest, most profitable photographic company in the world by the turn of the 20th century because he was a visionary, an astute businessman, and a consummate corporate executive. An inspired tinkerer like Thomas A. Edison, Eastman was mechanically adept and clever, but his true genius was in marketing and executive leadership. He intuitively understood that photography, then a “complicated” avocation pursued by highly trained geeks in dark rooms full of smelly and often toxic chemicals, had incredible mass market potential just waiting be tapped. So, aided by talented engineers, he conceived and helped design a simple fixed focus box camera with a fixed aperture and shutter speed, that enabled virtually anyone to take sharp handheld pictures of objects from about 6 feet to infinity in bright sunlight.

Patent illustration for original Kodak of 1888 lists George Eastman as the inventor, but he had help.
Eastman called his camera “The Kodak,” a purely conceptual name chosen because it was simple, strong, memorable, easy to pronounce in any language, and not associated with anything else. It was pre-loaded with enough film for 100 circular format exposures each measuring 2-1/2 inches in diameter on 70mm wide roll film. When you finished the roll you shipped your Kodak back to the factory in Rochester, NY and it was returned with your prints and reloaded with a fresh roll of film for the grand sum of $10 (equal to $331 today).
What the Kodak offered, for the then-handsome sum of $25 ($828.14 in 2024 dollars), was an unintimidating, easy-to use, portable camera with no adjustments that allowed ordinary people without any training or previous experience to take satisfying pictures of friends, family, pets, or anything else they wanted to remember. In the context of the 19th century, the Kodak was the world’s first successful point-and-shoot camera. It doesn’t qualify as the first one-time-use camera because you got your original camera back, but it was the camera that created the modern photofinishing industry.

The Kodak of 1888 with film chamber removed shows it spartan simplicity. Note the 2-1/2-inch diameter circular film aperture for round pix.
The Kodak camera alone established George Eastman as one of the greatest conceptual and marketing geniuses of all time. The actual patent for the Kodak (Patent 388,850, September 4, 1888) bears his name, but it incorporates ideas used in Eastman’s Detective Camera of 1886 and Eastman-Walker roll holder of 1885. The Kodak, initially manufactured for The Eastman Dry Plate & Film Co. by Frank Brownell of Rochester, New York is a wooden-bodied box camera clad in Turkey Morocco with “nickel and brass trimmings and enclosed in a neat sole leather case with shoulder strap.” Described as “about the size of a large field glass” it measures 3-1/4 x 3-1/4 x 6-1/2 inches and weighs 1lb. 10 oz. It has no frame counter-you had to count the number of turns when winding the film-advance key using an exposure indexing mark on the top of the camera, and record the number of exposure on a furnished exposure card! The Kodak no viewfinder—you aimed it with the aid of two lines, in a V pattern, engraved into the top. The lens, contained in a unique barrel-type shutter that revolved on an axis parallel to the film plane, was a 57mm f/9 Rapid Rectilinear. Based on the format it was a wide-angle, which gave good depth of field, but image quality in the corners of the field would have been poor, so the “corner-less” circular format made sense. The shutter, which was manually cocked with a pull cord, provided a single shutter speed of about 1/25 sec, but a felt plug, which fit into the front port of the camera, could be used for making time exposures. The shutter-release button was on the left, and the film exposure indicator was on the top.
Despite its spartan simplicity, ample price, and the inconvenience of having to return the camera for processing, the Kodak was a phenomenal success because it was the first camera that enabled anyone to take pictures, and it was aggressively marketed with a brilliant advertising campaign. Eastman’s astute grasp of human psychology and motivation is evident in these quotes from an 1888 Kodak ad “Anybody who can wind a watch can use the Kodak Camera…No tripod, no focusing, no adjustment whatever…A picturesque diary of your trip…may be obtained without trouble that will be worth a hundred times its cost in after years.” In 1889, it was “1. Pull the cord 2. Turn the key 3. Press the button. And so on for 100 pictures.” This was later refined into the greatest photographic advertising slogan of all time, “You press the button, we do the rest.” Those too impatient to send their cameras to Rochester could buy darkroom-loadable 100-exposure film spools for $2 apiece, and develop and print their own film, or send the exposed film back to Rochester and have it processed and returned with a fresh roll for $10. While The Kodak was certainly clever, none of its features, except for the barrel shutter, was truly unique, but the concept of a stone simple roll film camera, squarely aimed at the middle-class masses, and the forward-looking marketing techniques used to promote it ultimately brought photography within the reach of hundreds of millions of people. More than any other camera, the Kodak helped to create the modern photographic industry by transforming the act of taking pictures into a universal human experience.

George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak Co. in 1917: The consummate CEO.
Kodak Brownie 1900. If any single camera can claim to have created the snapshot, that common, unpretentious memento of things as they are, it is the immortal Kodak Brownie box camera introduced to the world at the turn of the last century in February 1900. It was neither the first box camera, nor the first camera to use paper-backed roll film with numbers on the back (that was the 1892 Bull’s-Eye Camera made by the Boston Camera Company, later acquired by Kodak). However, by offering a simple, competent, easy-to-use, daylight-loadable camera at the then-unprecedented price of $1.00 and putting a brilliantly conceived mass-marketing program behind it, Kodak was literally able to sell a camera to practically everybody, and to motivate millions to buy it. The Brownie’s success was unprecedented—in the first year alone, over 150,000 cameras were shipped, three times the previous record. To get a clearer idea of the impact of the Brownie, check out one of the many timelines of the 20th century and go to the year 1900. Right up there, along with such momentous events as Max Planck’s quantum theory and the publication of Sigmund Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” is Kodak’s introduction of the $1 Brownie camera!

The original $1.00 Kodak Brownie of 1900 had no viewfinder, so Kodak offered this small accessory reflex finder for two bits. What a deal!
The Brownie got its name from artist Palmer Cox’s whimsical cartoon versions of Brownies--“hard-working Scottish sprites or elves who did household chores” --that were as popular in the 1880-1920 period as Mickey Mouse is today. The Brownie is about as simple and basic as a camera can get—an imitation-leather covered cardboard box, with wooden film carrier, measuring about 3 x 3 x 5 inches. It has a simple fixed-focus f/11 meniscus lens, and metal rotary shutter with a single speed of about 1/35-1/50 sec plus T. There isn’t even a viewfinder—like the original Kodak of 1888, sighting lines, in a V pattern, were inscribed on the top! Starting in July 1900, a small clip-on accessory reflex finder was offered for 25 cents! The film-winding key was detachable and often lost, which is why many original Brownies are found with soldered-on, non-standard keys. Despite its modest specs, the original Kodak Brownie did score one extremely important historical distinction—it pioneered No.117 film, thus making it the world’s first 2-1/4 x 2-1/4-inch roll film camera. Size 117 film, essentially 6-exposures of 120 film on a narrower-flanged roll, is long defunct, but the glorious 2-1/4 square roll film format (in the 120 size) is still very much alive.
The Brownie was certainly the right product at the right time, at the right price with a catchy name. But what really transformed it into an enduring American icon that sired generations of Kodak Brownies up until the ‘70s and inspired countless competitors worldwide, was Kodak’s ingenious and aggressive marketing plan. It was advertised in popular magazines rather than trade magazines. Ads stressed it could be “operated by any school-boy or girl” and kids were urged to join The Brownie Camera Club, which had no initiation fee, and whose object was “to increase the interest of American boys and girls in matters pertaining to photography.” Kodak ran picture contests and awarded prizes. A roll of film, called a “Transparent-Film Cartridge, 6 exposures 2-1/4 x 2-1/4” cost 15 cents, a box of paper, 10 cents, and a Brownie Developing and Printing Outfit, 75 cents. At the bottom of many ads was a small box with the message “Send a dollar to your local Kodak Dealer for a Brownie Camera. If there is no dealer in your area, send us a dollar and we will ship the camera promptly.” With the arrival of the Brownie, anyone could take photographs of everything from special occasions to everyday life and do so inexpensively. The era of the snapshot had arrived, and the world would never be the same.
1912: Kodak establishes one of the first corporate Research Centers in the United States. Dedicated to pure research on emerging technologies as well as specific projects to improve existing products, this facility in Rochester, New York was a testament to Kodak’s open-ended commitment to research. Ultimately it enabled the company to maintain its dominant position in everything from film to cameras and lenses, to chemicals and materials, and as a pioneer in digital imaging.
1914: Kodak settles patent suit for $5 million (5% of Eastman’s fortune).
In 1914, after a protracted patent dispute with the estate of Hannibal Goodwin, a New Jersey clergyman who filed the first patent for flexible film, was settled in Goodwin’s favor. It had been used in countless cameras worldwide and in Kodak films, the major source of Kodak’s profits. The decision was a major blow to Eastman personally, and to Eastman Kodak, but fortunately occurring at a time when Kodak was expanding rapidly and could sustain the loss. Unfortunately, in 1985 when a federal judge ruled that Kodak had violated Polaroid's patents for instant photography, Kodak was in a much more precarious financial position and the payout of nearly $1 Billion hastened Kodak’s demise.
Landmark Kodak Cameras: Brilliant innovations that helped sell film!
Kodak 3A Special of 1916: First camera with built-in coupled rangefinder
From the 1890’s to 1960 Kodak produced about 200 different folding cameras that used a bellows to allow the camera to be relatively compact when folded. Kodak roll-film-format folders ranged from 6-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches to 828 Bantam (28 x 40mm), and included 35mm models like the Retina and Retinette, Kodak Instant Picture Cameras, and the last of the breed, the made-in-the-UK Kodak 66 models of 1958-1960. Technically one of the most interesting was the Kodak 3A Special of 1916, the world’s first camera to include a coupled rangefinder—a “3-band” split image device built into the front standard. Fitted with high quality lenses and multi-speed shutters, this top-of the line model provided a postcard format (3-1/4 x 5-1/2 inches on 122 film) and sold for about $30. Later Autographic models used A-122 film enabling captions to be written on the film with an included stylus, and some military versions were used during WWI. The 3A Special proves that Kodak was in the technological forefront of sophisticated camera innovations even prior to 1920.
The 35mm cartridge: a simple but necessary innovation
In 1934, Kodak announced the standard 35mm cartridge, that, with relatively minor variations (such as crimped, non-replaceable end caps) is still in production. While perhaps not a technological tour de force, the basic concept of the standard 35mm cartridge has endured for 90 years (so far) and is a major factor in the success of the 35mm format.

Original 1935 Kodachrome fiilm box, cartridge, canister, and mailer. Note postal charge of 1-1/2 cents!
Kodachrome: The best color transparency film ever?
In 1935 Kodak brought forth Kodachrome, which, in its improved (1938 to 2009) versions, is widely regarded as the finest color transparency and positive cine film ever made. It was discontinued in 2009, and processing was phased out in 2010. It is doubtful that any company other than Kodak could have produced and processed a film of such exquisite complexity at such a scale. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Kodak Retina l of 1934 was the first camera designed to take Kodak's new 35mm cartridge. Made in Germany it sired the scale-focusing line.
Kodak Retina I (Type 117), 1934. The first of the long-running Kodak Retina series (1934-1969) made by Kodak A.G. Stuttgart, Germany (formerly Dr. August Nagel Camerawerk), the Retina I was the first camera to use the newly developed 35mm cartridge and was thus a factor in the explosive growth of 35mm photography. Though the Retina I is a scale-focusing folding camera of conventional design, is very well made, and was fitted with high quality Schneider or Kodak lenses in Compur shutters. That’s why it remained in production in mildly updated form (the Retina 1a) until 1954. A paragon of straightforward simplicity, the prewar Retina I was most often fitted with an uncoated 50mm f/3/5 Schneider Xenar lens in a 1-1/500 sec plus T and B Compur-Rapid shutter.
Kodak Super Six-20, 1938. The world’s first series-production autoexposure (AE) still camera, the Super Six-20 was nearly 20 years ahead of its time, but it nevertheless exerted a profound influence on camera makers as a technological benchmark. With advances in electronics and metering technology, the concept of autoexposure took the photographic world by storm after WWII, and was ultimately developed into today’s sophisticated, through-the-lens, multi-pattern, multimode autoexposure systems. Understandably, Kodak introduced the Super Six-20 with considerable fanfare at the then-staggering price of $225 (about half the price of a new 1938 Ford). A strikingly handsome folding roll film camera of futuristic post-deco clamshell design, it produced eight 2/14x3-1/4 images per roll of 620 film, features a front-cell-focusing Tessar-formula 100mm f/ 3.5 Kodak Anastigmat Special lens, and a giant 3-3/4 x 3/4-inch selenium cell under a metal “awning” just below the rangefinder and separate viewfinder. On the left side of the front standard, there’s a manual-override aperture scale calibrated from f/3.5 to f/22. Set it to the unmarked “automatic” setting past the f/22 mark and you can see a little comb-toothed bar. As you press the right-hand shutter-release- slide inward, a moving needle (which is coupled to the three-bladed iris diaphragm) becomes trapped between the teeth on the bar. Thus, Kodak originated the trapped-needle system of automatic aperture control that was used (in refined form) on many later shutter-priority AE SLRs. This system had its limitations: It was based on a single film speed (ASA 32), only worked with shutter speeds from 1/25 to 1/200 sec (though the Super Six-20’s Kodak-made leaf shutter has speeds down to 1 sec), did not do well in dim light, and was no paragon of reliability. Considering its limitations Kodak’s engineers wisely designed a complete range of manual control options into the camera.

Kodak Super Six-20: The world's first autoexposure camera had real style, a great lens, a great rangefinder, and a so-so autoexposure system.
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Other fascinating features of this landmark machine include one of the longest based (3-1/8 inch), most accurate, superimposed-image rangefinders ever fitted to a roll film camera. robust, rigid, double-sided spring-loaded braces to support the front standard, double-exposure prevention (but no automatic film stop), a shutter speed scale oddly placed in the top section of the folding “clamshell,” and a system of meter cell masks to compensate for exposures made with filters. The lens, which focuses down to 4 feet, is capable of very sharp results. Fewer than 1000 Super Six-20s had been built when the camera went out of production in1945, and while it was a great image-builder that demonstrated Kodak’s technological prowess, it was not a great success in the marketplace.
Kodak Ektra ,1941. This was Kodak’s audacious attempt to build the finest interchangeable-lens 35mm rangefinder camera the world had ever seen, and they poured an enormous amount of resources into the project. The result, designed primarily by Joseph Mihaly, was technically brilliant, spectacular, and in many ways functional, but it was also extraordinarily complex, expensive to manufacture, and it featured a left-handed shutter release, film-advance crank, and front-mounted focusing wheel! The Ektra’s amazing features include: A 4-1/8-inch-base, high magnification, full-military-spec split-image rangefinder, varifocal dioptric viewfinder providing auto parallax compensation with breech-lock bayonet lenses from 35mm to 153mm, interchangeable film magazines with built-in, two-stroke film-advance lever and folding rewind crank, and a rubberized cloth focal-plane shutter with fast-and slow-speed dials providing speeds of 1-1/1000 sec plus B. Standard lens was a superb 50mm f/1.9 or f/3.5 Ektar. Since Kodak officially sold only 2,490 Ektras to the public before it was discontinued in 1948 and each one used 667 different parts made of 88 different materials in its construction, Kodak evidently lost a pile of money on the project. Ektras are unreliable picture takers (the shutter was never perfected and the film backs are trouble prone) but it is a magnificent and beautifully made collectible that is a testament to Kodak’s capabilites and lofty asperations.

The ill-fated Kodak Ektra of the '40s had a plethora of advanced features, a mil spec split-image rangefinder, and a duff shutter!
Kodak Retina IIIC 1958. The ultimate folding rangefinder 35 and the last full-production rangefinder Retina camera, this elegant, beautifully made classic features component-interchangeable lenses by Schneider Kreuznach or Rodenstock---the rear optical group behind the shutter stays put, and front components for 50mm normal, 35mm wide-angle and 80mm tele can be switched. The IIIC features a large, bright multi-frame range/viewfinder, built-in uncoupled selenium meter, Synchro-Compur MX shutter with speeds of 1-1/500 sec plus B, and a bottom-mounted wind lever. Readily available used, they’re superb collectibles and excellent picture takers. Normal lenses: 50mm f/2 Schneider Xenon or 50mm f/2 Rodenstock Heligon.

Kodak Retina IIIC, last of the folding Retinas, had a large multi-frame viwfinder, ucoupled selnium meter, and interchangable lens components including 50mm f/2 Schneider Xenon shown on camera.
Kodak Instamatic 100 1963. The first of a long line of Kodak Instamatic cameras, the simple, basic Instamatic 100 was a simple, snapshot camera based on the Kodapak 126 cartridge, an easy-loading system that was virtually foolproof and eliminated the need to thread the film leader onto a take-up spool. The plastic 126 cartridge, which only fit into the camera when correctly oriented, provided a nominal 28x28mm format on paper-backed 35mm film that was masked down to an actual format size of 26.5mm square. The film featured one registration hole (perforation) per image, and frame numbers were read out in a small window at the rear of the cartridge. The system was enormously successful---by 1970 Kodak alone had manufactured over 50-million Instamatics—and dozens of camera-making companies in the U.S., Japan, and Germany offered 126 cartridge cameras, mostly simple snapshot cameras, but many with more advanced features. Kodak, Rollei, Zeiss-Ikon, and Ricoh even fielded interchangeable lens 126 SLRs, though their performance, especially with fast lenses was limited by the 126 cartridge’s inherent limitations in providing good film flatness. It was probably the technical success of easy-loading, fully automatic 35mm point-and-shoot cameras in the late ‘70s that hastened the demise of the format, and the system petered out in the ‘80s. Kodak ceased manufacturing 126 Instamatic cartridges in 2000.

The cute little plastic-bodied Instamatic 100 features a fixed-focus 43mm f/11 acrylic lens, a simple 2-speed (1/40 and 1/90 sec) shutter, top-mounted film-wind lever, and a pop-up flash designed for baseless AG-1 flashbulbs, and sold for $15.95 list. It provided the basis for an extensive series of Instamatics with spring motor drive, flash cube sockets, rangefinders, faster lenses, and much more.

Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20 of 1972, shown with Magicube on top, was the first camera to use the 110 cartridge. It had a great lens!
Kodak Pocket Instamatic 20, 1972. This was the first camera to use the instant-loading 110 cartridge, smaller than the original 126 Instamatic cartridge of 1963, that provided improved film flatness and a 13x17mm format. Some see Kodak’s introduction of 110 as an attempt to wrest a lucrative 16mm subminiature market from the Japanese and the Germans, but the flat, pocketable 110 camera concept was really intended to make cameras more portable and thus increase picture taking, and to lower film production costs. The Pocket Instamatic 20 was a simple fixed-focus snapshot camera, but Kodak and others were soon producing more sophisticated 110 rangefinder models, and even 110 SLRs with zoom and interchangeable lenses. In under three years over 25-million 110 cameras were sold, and sales ultimately amounted to 4 billion dollars. The 110-craze peaked in the mid ‘70s and lasted until the early ‘80s. The nicely made Pocket Instamatic 20 had a sliding lens cover, bright-line optical finder, Magicube socket, two-speed shutter, tripod socket, and a plastic 3-element 26mm f/9.5 lens that performed remarkably well.
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