The history of Kodak: How it changed the world forever (Part 1) | Company story

There was a time when very few people owned cameras, and photography was an expensive hobby.

I knew only a handful of relatives who had cameras when I was young. Regular cameras, not the gizmos called ‘box cameras’. Some of the childhood photographs I still possess were taken by these relatives. But there are countless moments from those years that were never captured at all.

I wish they had been.

My first camera was a ‘box camera’. It was a slightly advanced version of the gadget that was first made in France in the 19th century. There were many improvements in camera technology and design since those first box cameras came on the scene; but the box cameras survived. They were relatively cheap, and were produced in large numbers for use by amateurs like me. 

My own first regular camera was an Asahi Pentax — a second-hand piece I purchased in the late nineteen-seventies — and I shot some wonderful photographs with it. I was working with a business magazine then, and the magazine had its own professional photographer; so I didn’t need to use a camera for my professional work. But I was keen to learn. I didn’t have a clue about how to select a camera; and was helped by the late Valmik Thapar, a professional photographer whose elder sister was editor of another magazine in the same group. 

That camera gave me some of the best photographs I have taken. Black-and-white, for color photography was not common then. those were the days

Then, in the mid-eighties, while I was in Paris on work, I bought a newly introduced Minolta loaded with automatic features. It was an impressive machine. But strangely, the photographs I took with it never quite matched the ones I had taken with the older Pentax.

Perhaps the fault was mine. Office work had begun consuming my attention, and photography slowly faded into the background.

And today, I hardly need to pick up a camera at all.

Everyone around me is constantly taking photographs and videos.

Children barely old enough to read can now shoot pictures instantly.

The photography scenario has changed completely.

An estimated four-point-five to six billion photographs are now taken every single day.

Photography has literally become child’s play.

You simply point a phone, tap a screen, and instantly share the image with the world.

No film. No darkrooms. No waiting.

But just think.

What feels effortless today was once an exhausting industrial procedure involving chemicals, fragile glass plates, portable darkrooms, and dangerous laboratory processes.

The company that changed all of that hassle forever was Kodak.

Welcome to Business History.

Today, we explore how Kodak transformed photography from a complicated scientific procedure into a global consumer habit — and built one of the most powerful industrial empires of the twentieth century.

Kodak is no longer what it used to be. But the project it started has got transformed into a daily activity for hundreds of millions of people, young and old. Especially the young.

CHAPTER 1: It was complicated

Imagine it’s the middle of the nineteenth century.

Photography was not a casual hobby.

It was a punishing technical process.

The wet-collodion process, invented in eighteen-fifty-one by Englishman Frederick Scott Archer, required photographers to prepare a syrup-like mixture of cellulose nitrate, spread it carefully over a glass plate, and soak the plate in silver nitrate to make it sensitive to light.

While the plate was still wet, it had to be rushed into the camera and exposed immediately. Meaning, the photograph had to be shot immediately.

Then the photographer had to hurry into a darkroom where chemicals like pyrogallic acid — and later even the dangerous potassium cyanide — were used to develop and fix the image.

If the collodion dried before the photo was shot, the process failed.

Everything had to happen quickly.

Early photographers often traveled with fragile glass plates, heavy wooden cameras (yes, wooden cameras), chemical bottles, tripods, and even portable darkrooms.

A single photograph could require an entire wagon full of equipment.

New variations emerged over time.

The ambrotype used an underexposed glass negative backed with black velvet to create the illusion of a positive image.

Then came the tintype, or ferrotype, where the collodion was spread onto black-lacquered metal instead of glass.

These innovations reduced costs and made portrait photography more accessible.

But photography still remained cumbersome, technical, and intimidating for ordinary people.

It was still far from becoming a mass consumer activity.

CHAPTER 2: A frustrated Eastman

In eighteen-seventy-eight, a twenty-four-year-old bank clerk named George Eastman discovered just how frustrating photography could be.

Eastman had planned a holiday trip to the Caribbean and had decided to document the journey with photographs.

But after purchasing the required equipment — the camera, glass plates, tripod, chemicals, and portable darkroom gear — he realized the entire process was absurdly cumbersome.

The trip was canceled.

But, instead of abandoning photography, Eastman became obsessed with simplifying it.

For the next decade, he experimented relentlessly with dry plates, roll film, and portable camera systems.

On January first, eighteen-eighty-one, he formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company with businessman Henry Strong, whose family manufactured buggy whips. Remember, this was before the automobile industry took off – and those who could afford used horse-drawn carriages (or buggies) to get around in the city.

Eastman became treasurer of the Eastman Dry Plate Company. Strong became president.

Eastman’s inventive drive quickly transformed the company.

He began replacing fragile glass plates with flexible roll film.

On October first, eighteen-eighty-four, the company was reorganized as the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company.

By eighteen-eighty-five, Eastman and William Walker had patented the first practical film roll holder.

Eastman continued refining the chemistry of film development and production process, hiring chemist Henry Reichenbach to improve film quality.

Their work culminated in the development of nitrocellulose film — one of the most important breakthroughs in photography history.

In eighteen-eighty-eight, Kodak introduced its revolutionary roll-film camera.

Eastman chose the word “Kodak” simply because he believed it sounded short, distinct, and memorable.

It meant absolutely nothing.

But over time, it would become one of the most recognizable brand names in the world.

Kodak was not the first company to make cameras.

But its real breakthrough was far more important.

Kodak industrialized flexible film and transformed photography into a mass consumer business.

Before Kodak, photography belonged largely to professionals and dedicated enthusiasts.

After Kodak, ordinary families could document their own lives for the first time in history.

CHAPTER 3: Smart selling

Kodak’s marketing strategy was pure genius.

Its famous slogan declared:

“You press the button, we do the rest.”

The original Kodak camera came pre-loaded with enough film for one hundred exposures.

Once the roll was finished, the customer mailed the entire camera back to Kodak.

The company developed the film, made the prints, reloaded the camera, and shipped it back ready for use again.

This entirely eliminated the complicated darkroom process for consumers.

The photographer’s only responsibility was to take pictures.

Kodak handled everything else.

But the real brilliance lay in the business model.

Kodak used what later became known as the “razor-and-blade” strategy.

The camera was the razor — sold cheaply to encourage adoption.

The real profits came from the blades:

Film.
Photographic paper.
Chemicals.
Development services.

Kodak controlled nearly every layer of the photography business — film manufacturing, paper production, chemicals, processing labs, and global distribution.

It wasn’t merely selling cameras.

It was controlling an entire industrial ecosystem.

During the nineteen-seventies and nineteen-eighties, film and photographic materials generated roughly seventy to eighty percent of Kodak’s revenues — and often more than ninety percent of its profits.

Kodak’s industrial machine became enormously profitable.

And that profitability would later become one of the company’s greatest weaknesses.

CHAPTER 4: Rapid expansion

Kodak expanded aggressively during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In nineteen-hundred, the company introduced the Brownie camera, making photography affordable for children and ordinary families.

Suddenly, photography was no longer reserved for professionals or wealthy hobbyists.

Ordinary people could now preserve pictures of birthdays, weddings, holidays, and daily life.

Kodak expanded into Europe, establishing Kodak Limited in Britain and building subsidiaries across Australia, France, and Germany.

George Eastman also understood something many industrialists overlooked:

Global dominance depended on controlling supply chains.

When the First World War disrupted German exports of photographic chemicals, optical glass, gelatin, and raw materials, Kodak faced a serious crisis.

In response, Eastman purchased land in Kingsport, Tennessee, eventually expanding the site into a massive chemical production complex capable of producing methanol, acetone, and photographic chemicals internally.

This vertical integration made Kodak increasingly self-sufficient and strengthened its grip over the photography industry.

But Kodak’s growing dominance also attracted government scrutiny.

Facing federal antitrust lawsuits, Eastman agreed in nineteen-twenty-one to reduce some monopolistic practices in cameras while strengthening Kodak’s control over film production and raw materials.

Kodak also expanded into motion pictures.

In nineteen-oh-eight, when major movie producers including Thomas Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company, Eastman negotiated to become the sole supplier of film to the industry.

Kodak was no longer merely a camera company.

It had become a global industrial empire.

Yet Kodak’s corporate culture also reflected the prejudices of its era.

George Eastman held discriminatory views against Black Americans, Catholics, and Jews.

Company-sponsored housing, clubs, and social services in Rochester often excluded minorities, reinforcing divisions that persisted for decades.

Like many industrial giants of its time, Kodak’s legacy included both technological progress and social exclusion.

CHAPTER 5: Kodak moments

By the nineteen-twenties, George Eastman had largely stepped away from Kodak’s daily operations.

But his final years were marked by severe physical pain caused by a degenerative spinal disorder.

Unable to walk comfortably and suffering from depression, Eastman committed suicide on March fourteenth, nineteen-thirty-two.

His final note reportedly read:

“My work is done. Why wait?”

Yet the industrial system he built remained remarkably strong.

Kodak continued expanding under leaders like William G. Stuber, a photographic emulsion expert who had spent decades refining photographic materials.

Kodak had already established major research laboratories back in nineteen-twelve.

Research focused heavily on color photography and film emulsions.

In nineteen-fifteen, Kodak introduced early two-color Kodachrome film developed by John Capstaff.

Then, in nineteen-thirty-five, Kodak launched the far more advanced Kodachrome color film that became legendary among both professionals and amateurs.

The product revolutionized color photography.

For much of the twentieth century, a “Kodak Moment” meant something precious:

A wedding.
A birthday.
A child’s first steps.
A family vacation.

Kodak was not merely selling film.

It was selling memory itself.

For generations, photography and Kodak became almost inseparable in the public imagination.

By the second half of the twentieth century, Kodak had become one of the most powerful and recognizable companies on Earth.

It dominated photography globally.

Its products shaped how humanity remembered itself.

But even as Kodak celebrated its dominance, a serious challenge had already begun emerging quietly inside its own laboratories.

A technology that would eventually destroy the empire George Eastman built.

And the most ironic part?

Kodak itself helped invent it.

In Part Two, we explore the digital revolution, Kodak’s fatal hesitation, and one of the greatest corporate collapses in business history.

Subscribe to our Business History YouTube channel so you don't miss Part Two, coming this Friday, 6 November.