Kodak

The company Kodak — one of the major producers of digital cameras and a leader in the development of light-sensitive matrices — has gone through a 126-year journey. Its founder, George Eastman, is largely responsible for transforming photography from a very expensive and laborious activity for the few into a mass and widely accessible phenomenon. And most of today's photo industry giants have taken and continue to take advantage of technologies developed by Kodak engineers.

George Eastman, working as a junior clerk at the Rochester Savings Bank in 1878, became "obsessed" with photography when a friend suggested he take a camera with him on his next vacation. Eastman bought one of the most modern cameras of the time and all the necessary accessories, but was quickly disheartened by the pile of equipment that appeared at home. The camera was the size of a modern microwave, could only be held by a heavy wooden tripod, required a tent for applying photo emulsion to plates, developing and drying them, and a variety of bottles of chemicals, with a jug for water completing the list. "Only a horse can carry all this equipment!" Eastman exclaimed in frustration and stayed home. He spent his vacation thinking about how to simplify the process of photography and make it accessible to everyone.

He decided to start with light-sensitive material. In English photo magazines, Eastman read that photographers prepared their own photo emulsion from gelatin. After long experiments, he finally managed to develop a recipe for a new, more convenient dry photo emulsion that could be applied to plates in advance.

Realizing the potential of the invention, he started the production of ready-made dry plates, which became popular. But this was not enough for Eastman; he wanted to find a lighter and more flexible base for the emulsion than glass. He tried applying light-sensitive material to paper, rolling it up, and placing it in a round cassette that could be inserted into any camera just like a cassette for glass plates.

But when the first flexible film finally went on sale, it did not become wildly popular. Eastman realized that to make photography truly mass-market, consumers needed to be offered a simple-to-use camera. Such a camera he designed and patented in 1886. It was a box camera with a roller cassette designed for 48 negatives of 4 x 5 inches, with focusing optics and a loud, not very well-working "alligator shutter." To top it off, the shutter turned out to be the most expensive part of the camera, so Eastman, as soon as the opportunity arose, replaced it with a simpler and cheaper version.

After making a few more improvements, in 1888 George Eastman released the revolutionary Kodak No. 1 amateur camera. The camera was still a small box (which later earned it the name "detective camera") with a lens that transmitted a circular image 2.25 inches in diameter onto the film. But most importantly, the device could be operated by anyone who, as the instructions said, could: 1) Point the camera, 2) Press the button, 3) Turn the key, 4) Pull the cord. The camera with a loaded roll of film for 100 frames cost $25 — much cheaper than all other cameras produced at the time. After finishing the film, the buyer would mail the camera along with the roll to the Eastman Company in Rochester, New York, where the film was removed, developed, printed, and the camera reloaded, for which the client paid $10. The new affordable camera could be bought by many, and thanks to its simplicity and the ability to receive ready-made photographs by mail, almost every buyer became an avid photography enthusiast. The demand for film and Kodak cameras skyrocketed, and for the next 10 years, the company struggled to keep up.

Red on Yellow

Along with Eastman's first mass camera came the name Kodak, which for many years became synonymous with the word "camera." There were many legends about its origin, but this is what Eastman himself said about it: "I just made up the word. 'K' is my favorite letter of the alphabet, it seems strong and memorable. I had to try many combinations of letters before I came up with a word that begins and ends with 'K.' And the word Kodak is the result of my efforts."

The first logo of Eastman Kodak Company appeared in the 1900s — the letters "E," "K," and "C" inscribed in a circle. In 1935, the focus shifted to the word Kodak, printed in red and placed in a yellow rectangle. In 1960, the rectangle turned into a triangle. And in 1971, the well-known square yellow-red logo was developed, which, with minor changes, lasted until 2006, when as a result of rebranding, the logo became more concise: the red inscription Kodak was written in a "rounded" font with an original "a."

Such careful attention to the logo and advertising is a distinctive feature of Kodak, laid down by its founder. George Eastman was one of the first industrialists to believe in the power of advertising. He always wrote the advertising copy himself, and the slogan he coined for the release of the first camera, "You press the button, we do the rest," remains relevant to this day.

The Progenitor of "Soap Boxes"

After the success of the Kodak No. 1 camera, Eastman continued to work on simplifying and reducing the cost of photographic processes. The result of this work was the appearance of transparent negative film and the first camera that could be loaded in daylight. Eastman, working in provincial Rochester, became a leader in the global photo market, displacing the Germans, who were technical leaders in optics, precision chemistry, and cameras. German products were of exceptional quality but were very expensive and therefore produced in small quantities. The former clerk from Rochester found a successful price-quality ratio, focusing his financial and human resources on the international mass market and large-scale production. But the market experienced a real shock in 1900 when the first samples of the phenomenally cheap and simple Kodak Brownie camera went on sale.

The camera cost only $1, and the film for it — 15 cents. It was a box made of pressed cardboard, covered with imitation leather, containing six frames of 57 x 57 mm, the simplest meniscus lens, one diaphragm, one exposure, and a winding handle. The photographer only needed to press the button and remember to wind the frame. When the film was finished, the camera was not sent back to the factory but to the nearest Eastman Kodak receiving point, which were opening up more and more every year — this was the beginning of the modern Kodak Express photo printing system.

With the advent of Kodak Brownie, photography became accessible not just to many, but to almost everyone. Interestingly, the initial target audience for the camera was children. A significant contribution to the popularity of the camera was made by the legendary American artist Palmer Cox. The heroes of his comics, little brownies (translated from English as "house spirits"), who according to the plot lived in cameras and drew photographs, were no less popular with children than Harry Potter is today. These cameras were given as birthday gifts, Christmas presents, for the first day of school, and just like that. Amazingly, the Brownie series cameras introduced the world of photography to such later-famous photographers as Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Brownie cameras were produced in incredible quantities and dozens of varieties for almost 75 years. The well-known technology site Wired.com, when compiling a list of "10 Gadgets That Changed the World," included the Kodak Brownie 127 camera — the first "soapbox" camera, which appeared in 1957. In the black plastic camera with a small lens, a white shutter button, and a film winding wheel, you can easily recognize the progenitor of all the various "soapboxes" that appeared in Russia only in the 1990s. The last Brownies were produced in plastic-aluminum cases and were equipped with disposable flash lamps. They gave way to the well-known models with automatic film winding, equipped with fairly powerful electric flashes and zoom lenses.

Not Only Photography

A distinctive feature of George Eastman was his versatility — he never focused solely on one narrow area of photo production, but tried to cover all fields somehow related to photography. Thus, in 1902, the Kodak Developing Machine appeared, eliminating the need to use a "dark room" for developing — the precursor of modern mini-labs. The appearance of flexible film allowed Thomas Edison in 1891 to create the first movie camera, and in 1932, Eastman Kodak released an affordable 16mm reversal film based on cellulose acetate, the 16mm Cine-Kodak Motion Picture Camera, and the Kodascope Projector, thereby starting the era of amateur cinema. At the same time, the company continued to improve film and equipment for professional cinema production, creating color, more durable, and safer-to-use light-sensitive materials. In 1950, Kodak received an Oscar for creating 35mm triacetate film. To this day, 90% of feature and documentary commercial films are shot on Kodak film. And in 1966, from the Lunar Orbiter II space station, using a Kodak dual-lens camera, film, processor, and reading device, the "photograph of the century" was obtained — an image of the Copernicus lunar crater.