Scientist of the Day - George Eastman
Small advertisement for the new Kodak camera, placed by the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. of Rochester, N.Y., in Scientific American, Nov. 3, 1888 (Liinda Hall Library)
George Eastman, an American inventor and manufacturer, was born July 12, 1854, n a village just north of Utica, New York. In 1877, while employed as a bank clerk in Rochester, Eastman was introduced to photography, and he immediately began to try to improve the photographic process. At the time, photographers were just beginning to discover dry plate emulsions, to replace the wet collodion plates that had been used for decades. Collaborating with a chemist, Eastman learned how to make dry plates coated with gelatin, and he set up a company in 1880, the Eastman Dry Plate Co., to produce these new plates. Soon he got the idea of replacing the glass plates with a rolled paper film, and by 1884, he had solved all the production problems and was marketing an attachment with rollers that would fit the back of any camera, so that the user could take dozens of exposures without opening the camera back. The professionals resisted, claiming that the glass plates yielded better images than the rolled film. At that point, Eastman showed his true inventive genius. If he could not capture an existing market for his novel idea, he would create a new market of buyers.
Portrait of George Eastman, photograph by Paul Nadar, 1890 (Wikimedia commons)
In 1888, Eastman launched his Kodak camera, a small box camera that came with a roll of paper film installed that could hold 100 exposures. It cost $25. All you had to do was point, click, advance the film, pull a string to reset the shutter, and click again. When the last frame was taken, the customer sent the camera back to the factory in Rochester, which developed the film, made prints, and installed a new roll in the camera, at a cost of $10. If you wanted to develop your own negatives, a new roll of film would cost you $2. Ordinary people loved being able to take their own pictures. Eastman had created the amateur photographer, a non-existent breed in 1880. The name "Kodak" was not an acronym or eponym, just a word Eastman invented and liked, beginning and ending with his favorite letter "K", unusual and distinctive and easy to remember.
Front page story on the new Kodak camera, Scientific American, Sep. 15, 1888 (Linda Hall Library)
The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co., as the company was renamed, placed ads in a number of magazines, including Scientific American; you can see a sample ad in our first image. But by the time this ad was printed in Scientific American on Nov. 3, 1888, an even better advertisement had already appeared, in the form of a front-page article and review that ran in Scientific American on Sep. 15, 1888. We show not only the front page of the 2-page story (third image), but details of two wood engravings that illustrated the shutter and lens (fourth image) and the reels for the paper film (fifth image).
The front of the new Kodak camera, with front plate removed, revealing the cylindrical shutter and the lens, detail of wood engraving in Scientific American, Sep. 15, 1888 (Linda Hall Library)
The supply and take-up reels for the paper film in the new Kodak camera, wood engraving in Scientific American, Sep. 15, 1888 (Linda Hall Library)
The images recorded by the early Kodak cameras were circular, because of the nature of the shutter. We show one of those early photographs in our sixth image, where a Kodak-wielding photographer took a photo of George Eastman himself, holding and using his own Kodak camera, on board a ship on the way to France in 1890, where the celebrated photographer Paul Nadar, son of the even more celebrated photographer Nadar, would record many photographic portraits of the brilliant young inventor (see second image), using his soon-to-be-old-fashioned glass-plate camera.
Portrait of George Eastman holding a Kodak camera, taken with another Kodak camera, 1890, on board a ship to France, George Eastman Museum, Rochester, N.Y. (eastman.org)
Millions of Kodak cameras were sold, and, of course, tens of millions of rolls of film, which was where the money was made. The once-again rebranded Eastman Kodak Co. became the dominant manufacturer of both cameras and film for nearly a century.
An original Kodak camera of 1888 on display in the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, N.Y. (eastman.org)
Eastman grew very rich, and he gave most of his money away – to Rochester, to the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology; to the Eastman School of Music, which he founded, and to all sorts of cultural and medical institutions, both in and out of Rochester. In his last few years of life, he suffered great pain from deterioration of his spine, and on Mar. 14, 1932, he took his own life. His stately home in Rochester is now a museum of photography, the George Eastman Museum (eighth image). It is not that far from the Corning Museum of Glass; both could be visited in one well-planned trip. I intend to try to do so.
The George Eastman Museum, in Eastman’s former home, Rochester, N.Y. (Wikimedia commons)
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
