George Eastman

By Emre Yıldırım

George Eastman was born July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York, and he took photography out of the studio and put it in everyone's pocket. As a young bank clerk, Eastman bought a wet-plate camera outfit for a vacation — and was so appalled by its tent, chemicals, and glass plates that he spent his evenings learning emulsion chemistry instead of traveling. By 1880 he had a machine for coating dry plates; in 1881 he founded the Eastman Dry Plate Company.

The revolution came in two parts. First the film: in 1885 Eastman introduced paper-backed roll film, and by 1889 a transparent celluloid base — flexible film that could be wound through a camera, dozens of exposures at a time, replacing fragile glass plates. Then the camera: in June 1888 he launched the Kodak — a small box camera preloaded with a 100-exposure roll, sold for $25 with the immortal slogan "You press the button, we do the rest." The customer mailed the whole camera to Rochester; Kodak developed the film, printed the pictures, and reloaded the camera. In 1900 the Brownie brought the price to one dollar, and photography became a mass pastime: the snapshot, the family album, the vacation photo were born.

Eastman's film had a second destiny he had not planned: it was the medium of the motion picture. Edison's kinetoscope, the Lumière cinematograph — all ran on Eastman celluloid. Kodak became one of the great companies of the twentieth century, dominating film for a hundred years.

Eastman, a lifelong bachelor, gave away over $100 million — to MIT, to the University of Rochester, to dental clinics worldwide. Suffering from a degenerative spinal disease, he ended his own life on March 14, 1932, in Rochester, leaving a note: "My work is done. Why wait?" His work was done: he had given the world its eyes.

Eastman's empire began with a ruined vacation. In 1877, planning a trip to Santo Domingo, the 23-year-old bank clerk bought a complete wet-plate outfit — camera, tripod, tent, chemicals, glass plates — and was so daunted by the pack-mule load that he never took the trip, studying emulsion chemistry instead. By 1880 his plate-coating machine worked; the Eastman Dry Plate Company followed in 1881. The roll-film breakthrough needed a partner: William Hall Walker designed the roll holder, and Eastman's 1885 "American Film" — paper-backed stripping film — won the market; the transparent celluloid base of 1889, developed with Henry Reichenbach, made the modern film era. The Kodak name was pure invention: Eastman loved the letter K — "strong, incisive" — and had the name trademarked before the camera existed. The 1888 Kodak sold for $25; the 1900 Brownie, designed by Frank Brownell, for $1, and sold in the millions. Kodak Park in Rochester became a city within a city. Eastman, who never married, gave away a fortune that would exceed a billion in today's money: the Eastman School of Music, dental clinics on three continents, and the endowment of MIT and the University of Rochester.

Impact on civilization

Roll film democratized the image. Before Eastman, photography was a craft for professionals and the wealthy — heavy, chemical, expensive; after him, it was a vernacular for everyone, and the visual record of ordinary life began: birthdays, weddings, soldiers' farewells, the family album as the archive of the middle class. Photojournalism, advertising, and the illustrated press all ran on cheap, portable film. And cinema — the defining art form of the twentieth century — was physically impossible without flexible roll film; Hollywood is built on Eastman's celluloid. The digital camera eventually killed the film business, but the culture Eastman created — everyone a photographer, every moment preservable — survived the medium and conquered the phone. He did not invent photography; he invented the photograph as a mass object.

Kodak's own fate is the coda: the company that invented the digital camera in 1975 was destroyed by it, filing for bankruptcy in 2012 — a parable of disruption taught in every business school. But the snapshot culture Eastman created outlived the film: the phone camera is the Brownie's true heir, and the family album never died, it just moved to the cloud.