The Kodak Story

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com slash tech Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash tech Stuff. Well, Hello, there are kids, and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette and I am

an editor at how Stuff Works dot com. Sitting across from me, as is typically the case when we talk about technology and stuff in the studio, that would be senior writer Jonathan Strickland, somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. Awesome, thank you. I actually know where that comes from. Yeah, yeah, yep,

that's a brave New world. Get there, brave New world that's from. I thought that was Beowulf. It was that, you know, that's that's the original first line of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It's actually what that is. You didn't recognize it because I didn't use the Middle English. Yeah, okay, all right, well that's no for that. Yeah, this is

full of beans this morning. Um. You know, frequently we you know, frequently when we talk about topics on tech stuff, Um, it's either something that's near and dear to our hearts or something specifically that somebody wrote in about and this is this is actually something sort of more toward the former, but it's also something that's hit the headlines, and it's probably near and dear to many of your hearts as well, because the company we're talking about it is going through

some very rough times and it's somebody that it made a real difference to really the world. Yeah, we're talking about Kodak here and uh and yeah, Kodak has made a huge impact on technology, on photography in general, especially when it comes to the average person having a chance to get his or her hands on a camera, because before Kodak, photography was really a pretty limited field and it was just there really were there really were no

consumer cameras. And the company itself has a very long history. It's over a century old. Yes, yes, and and really well for one thing, um, not long before we recorded this, in February, UM, the company declared Chapter eleven bankruptcy. Yeah, that was in January. And then and then a month later they made an announcement that really kind of showed how the company has changed dramatically. On February nine, Kodak

announced that it was getting out of the camera business. Yeah, and I mean there's it's one thing to talk about all the businesses that camera that Kodak is in, um, you know, but it is made. It started out in the film business essentially, but moved quickly into cameras. And the idea of it that Kodak would stop making cameras, it's just sort of it's it's it's really kind of earth shaking to somebody who's grown up with it, right, it would be it's hard to it's hard to kind

of what would you compare it to. It would be like if Apple said it was no longer going to make Max, like from now on, Apple was just going to concentrate on mobile electronics. It's even it's yeah, but I'm just trying to come up with something that people can core business, right, Yeah, the thing that is most identified, and I guess you could argue that with Apple. Now the iPod in the iPhone have kind of supplanted the Mac. But yeah, it's it's hard to wrap your mind around it.

So this means no more digital cameras or video cameras or even digital picture frames from Kodak. Instead, what they're going to focus their main core business on focus no

longer will be cameras, It'll be printers. So I guess it's good that HP decided to continue it's consumer computer business and not focus primarily on consumer printers for its consumer side, because otherwise HP and Kodak would just be head to head they still are technically, but well, the apparently the bankruptcy filing included this information that as of September, the end of September, UH Kodak had about five point

one billion dollars to its name. Unfortunately, it had six point seven five billion dollars in debt, including twelve million dollars that it owed to Nokia UM in Finland for royalties on intellectual property. So yeah, when you have more debt than you have money, that's what we call a bad thing. That's also what we call fresh out of college,

at least in the United States. Well, uh, yeah, I don't think that's exclusive to the US, No, but there are a lot of places in Europe where taxes end up taking care of a lot of the I'm just saying, well, UM Kodak has quite a bit of UH intellectual property information UM and then tried to leverage that before it filed for bankruptcy. And there this is not really new stuff.

Code struggling has been a result of the you know, the the burgeoning UH digital photography industry, which it has done somewhat of a you know, semi successful capitalization on. But and I think you could say right now, the digital photography has supplanted a film photography for all. But uh, there's a decreasing number of photographers who will use film. And it's not that film is is worse than than digital.

In fact, there are a lot of photographers who argue the opposite, that there are qualities that you get with film that you cannot get with digital unless you were to spend countless hours trying to recapture something that film does naturally on its own. But that being said, the general consumer, it's it's almost all digital now. I mean that's what we have in our in our phones, it's what we have. Some m P three players have them, tablets, I mean, it's our our computers have a lot of

cases have the camera built into the frame. Right. Yeah, and it would use them for you know, chatting and things like that, but you can also use them and take still photos. It would be very inconvenient if those were all film based. True. But yeah, so wait, hold on, I gotta take my laptop apart to get the film out. Yeah. So some people say that Codex The reason why Kodak is in the position it's in now is that it

did not adapt quickly enough. It did not commit fully enough to the digital revolution and stuck with the film side for consumer products maybe a bit too loyally. You know, maybe we were a little too adamant on keeping with that film side of the equation and not jumping enough over to the digital side. And uh, and you know, it's kind of hard to say whether back at the back when Kodak was making these calls, it was hard to tell that that was going to be the wrong call,

right well. Uh, And it's also an oversimplification because Kodak was one of the pioneers of digital, because we're going to look at that in a moment. Plus uh, you know, they they've Kodak would have been in a much worse position or even gone by now if it hadn't diversified itself. I think we should take a look back, uh, starting from the beginning. And it and a guy that many

of you know. He's a he's a tech pioneer, but his name is certainly familiar to It's it's a household name for many many people and has been especially in Rochester, New York, New York. So about George Eastman. George Eastman, who you know, he's not known as the brainiest inventor whoever lived. In fact, he was sort of an average guy. Um came out of an average home, ended up having to uh to jump right into the workforce and actually

was a banker for a while too. He went to school to become a to improve himself and um ended up being a banker. But you know, he went on a vacation. This is kind of funny. He went on a vacation and wanted to be able to take pictures, so he bought a wet plate outfit. This is way photography was was done before Eastman got the idea to

try to simplify things somewhat. And he had to buy a boatload of gear because yeah, because with wet plate photography, you have to have the plate wet with chemicals before you take the photo, and before it the plate dries, you have to develop the photo, so you have to keep the He had to buy a tent so that he could develop the photos of his vacation on the spot before the before the chemicals dried. That's somewhat inconvenient. And this is why professionals were the only people taking

photos because nobody wanted to mess with this. It was expensive, it was a pain in the neck. And then came the development of the dry plate development. Are you gonna do that the whole podcast? Because I will quit right now. The funny thing is we use these terms, but these are totally photography terms. Okay, of the progression from what plate to dry plate? Um, So, yeah, he knew about this. This is not something that he invented that plate to

dry plate, right. Dry plate meant that you no longer had to have those wet chemicals on the plates before you took your photo, and you didn't have to worry about it drying out before before you had to develop it. But what he did because he came up with a an emulsion coding machine which allowed the mass production of dry plates, which was a big deal because that before then you were making dry plates one at a time,

very slow, painstaking process, not efficient. There was no real way to make that a consumer market device at all because it just took too long to make them. Yes, this is this is one of those situations where he figured out he heard about these experiments people were doing with with a gelatine coating for the chemicals that you would use to capture an image. And he said, you know, I think that there's got to be a way to

make this easier. And he spent long hours after he would go home from work, he would spend hours working in his mother's kitchen, UM trying to come up with a way to to make this a mass production affair. And they apparently he would they would find him in the morning. He would fall asleep on the floor in his clothes, coming home after a long day at the office,

and he'd have to go back to work. So he spent a long time UH working on this process and a lot of elbow grease, really putting into the process of trying to come up with us. But no headlight fluid. So in eighteen eighty fluid. Yeah, I'll tell you later. In eighteen eighty he began to create the commercial production of these dry plates, and he rented Aloft in Rochester,

New York. And this is the date that Kodak tends to trace its history back to, is an eighteen eighty when Eastman started to actually UH produce these dry plates and sell UH. And a year later Eastman partnered up with a guy named Henry A strong. Hey, you know you gotta go with somebody with it with a name like that. We well, and you know what he he made before he got into this whole film business, right, buggy whips. Yeah, when you if you have a strong

buggy whip, you know you're in good hands. Was supposed to those weak buggy whips. I don't want to make any cracks about buggy whips. I can do it too. So anyway, they formed the partnership that they called the Eastman Dry Plate Company, which just rolls off the tongue and uh. And then that year that fall Eastman quits his job as a bank clerk and devotes his full attention to this business. Yep. So he he really believed that they were going to make a mark, I may

make a name for themselves in this this business. And he was right. They were very successful, very early by three. So just two years after they had formed this partnership, they transferred over to a four story building in uh an address that we now know as three four three State Street, Rochester, New York. And if you were to visit that area, you would find Codex Worldwide headquarters. So they did not they did not venture far, No, not at all. Although the building looks completely it's it's a

different building. It's what's now three four three State Street, so should make that clear. But in eighteen eighty four they changed the business and it it evolved from a partnership into a corporation with fourteen shareholders at with a it was a two hundred thousand dollar corporation, which in four that's a that's a big jung of change. I did not actually think to do the conversion to find out exactly how much that is in today's dollars, but I'll say lots. Yeah, I I only did one conversion,

and that stuff for something that's coming up soon. Yeah, I'm wondering if it's the same thing. Probably, um yeah. And as a matter of fact, in four, that's when they introduced negative paper, which you know basically was paper that just complained about how nothing's going to work out.

A lot of negative papers in college now, um this of course, uh, you know was anybody who's worked with film for cameras as uh, you know what you use to capture you know, you have the negatives are looks like and you know, hold it up to the light. It looks like the opposite of what you see when you print a photo. UM, and William H. Walker somebody who was working with the company, uh, invented a role

holder for for negative. So this is this is just you know, this is trivia in a way, but it's not in another because these guys are inventing the way that you capture images for and and making it simpler and mass productive, you know, doing the mass production work for this stuff. So they're really inventing the photo business. Yeah, it's because of these the work that these men did that the the consumer camera developed evolved the way it did. I know, but I just wanted to stop myself before

I said it again didn't quite work. But anyway, Yeah, if if if someone else had made advances in the technology, perhaps cameras would have have been completely different. You know when you think of that role of film that if you've ever used a camera that actually used film and you had to put a roll of film in and feed the film over through a little feeder and then uh, they would take photos and you look at the exposure number on your camera. Uh. The reason why we do

that is because the work these men did. If other people had done something else. Then cameras would have looked and behaved completely differently than the way that we think of them. Um. Yeah. And as a matter of fact, this is in eighteen six, This is about the time that uh, Kodak sowed it's its roots of um sod its roots really sort of began, Yes, began looking at the possibility that they should be getting into other technologies. They were there, uh uh one of the very first

companies in America that had a full time research scientist. Um. And he was looking at the creating a transparent film base. Um, you know, something that was flexible, it didn't have to be a solid plate like the existing photo technology was. Yeah, the first transparent photographic film came from Kodak, and it was right around that time. Uh. It was when Eastman

founded the Kodak company. Yes, I I love the genesis of this name because now companies come up with names for themselves and from products by going through marketing groups and focus groups and trying to come up with, you know, the excitra things that were stir the passions. Eastman sat down. He liked the letter K because he felt like it was a strong letter and just played around with words he made up Kodak and you know, look at that. It's it's short, it's sweet, and people remember it's one

letter off from being a bear. Also, I think he he also liked that the color yellow, the signature color yellow that they use on their packaging. Um, and he came up with the slogan, you press the button, we do the rest for the first camera. Now here again, it's twelve they've stopped producing cameras or are about to really? Um, So it was when they released their first camera. Yeah. Before that they were they were strictly film yes, and dry plate and dry plate. And now in eighty eight

they've really released their first camera. This is giving birth to the era of snapshot photography. Yeah. In the sentence that huge. Yeah, this is what allows the average person to get a camera and not have a lot of training or expertise of fatiography and take pictures. Now again, we should stress that the quality of pictures is going to depend highly upon the type of camera and the photographer.

We have a photographer as our producing today, and I just want to make it clear that we appreciate the intense level of skill that she has as a photographer. I I agree, Um, she's also scary. Um and and eighty nine was when the when Kodak released its first commercial transparent role film. UM. So this perfection that the release of the camera equipment, the release of the transparent

role film. UM this is a complete revolution because it's it's made uh, photography available to the average person again. Um and Uh, this is when you know things started to really change. You Also at this time, though, you had to go into a dark area to load your camera because you don't want to expose your film and ruin it before you can take pictures. Because of course, the whole thing about film is that it has a chemical reaction when it's exposed to light, and that's what

allows it to capture photos or pictures. If you were to expose that film to light before you were to use in a camera, then you would just ruin that that film. It would be it would be as if you had taken a photo already. Uh. That was completely uncontrolled circumstances. So you had to load it in a dark room until when they introduced their first daylight loading camera, which had the role protected the film in such a way that you could load the film into a camera advance.

It the film, so that the little part that was exposed is beyond where you're taking the images and you just start snapping away. Yep. That's a a big difference because I can tell you trying to load film in the dark can be really annoying, especially if you drop it. Uma. So uh, you know, we don't want to we don't

want to discuss every little thing they've got on. I mean, there's there's a lot of information on the Kodak website about this type of stuff if you're really interested in the company, which is amazing, but you know, I want to capture some of the highlights. Um. You know they did change, yes, exactly, Well, they were the Eastman Company. They switched to the Eastman Company and then they became Eastman Kodak and capture the again capture to uh to really play off of the name Kodak um and uh,

let's see. I mean the they basically grew for the next few years, just rapidly. They took off, they built buildings,

they started moving outside the United States. Um. And then they announced the pocket Codac camera in which used role film and you hey, guess what, you could actually figure out where what what snapshot you were on because it had an indicator to tell you what number you Hey, I'm on number twelve, right, which is very useful when you are wondering how many photos you have left on the roll and you know, well, anyone who's used a film camera and they've wanted to go out and take

pictures of stuff it does. It can be frustrating if you looked down and he said, oh, wait, I only have two photos left. Is this moment really worth capturing? Yeah? Or should I wait and and save those two photos? But before this you essentially had to keep track of it with yourself until you realize that, oh, the cameras not advancing any further because I've taken the last image. Anyone who's ever rolled his or her own film as I have also has had that problem because you go

in the dark, you're sitting there and loading it. It feels like enough, you put it in the cartridge and then you start snapping photos and it doesn't matter if there's a number on that because you really don't know exactly how many photos you've got. Um so yeah, I mean they started moving into uh into Europe about this time, but oh yeah, they started while we had see through

photos before because they invented the transparent film. But this is when they really got into uh see through stuff because they started making plates and paper for X rays, yes, which had only been discovered the year before. So yeah, they jumped on that very very quickly. I mean, Kodak at this point was one of the leading companies when it came to capturing and processing images. Well, I mean that also in six they started promoting the first film

especially made for creating motion pictures. They actually worked with some some inventor guy who also lived in New York. I can't remember his name. No, No, that wouldn't it. Alexander grim bell Um, Steve Jobs. I'm just okay, I'm gonna keep giving wrong answers until you say the right one. Thomas Alva Edison, that guy. Yeah, I like to call him elephant shucker. Oh man. Yeah, I'm just mean, Well, I didn't kill an elephant with alternating current. Well technically

he didn't. He just sanctioned it. Okay, um, fair enough, So that was only following orders, following orders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they didn't come up with the folding pocket codac camera, um, which was great if you had folding pockets. Yeah, if you didn't. Well, well, this is this is the first to have the two and a quarter by three and a quarter inch negative, which was the standard size for you know, thirty years or so for a while. Anyway, in Eastman kind of showed what sort of boss he was.

We you know, we if you listen to our HP podcasts, you learned about the founders of HP were very much about rewarding employees and and fostering a good corporate citizens sort of uh profile. Right, Well, Kodak is the same way, and Eastman very much believed in rewarding his employees in he gave them a bonus from his own personal money because he felt that they had worked so hard and done such good work for the company. So here's ten million dollars. Yeah, here's a man taking money from his

own pocket to reward his employees. Not you don't see a whole lot of that today, Not not at the same level. No, No, I mean you might get like, ah, here you go, congratulations. Well, well, you see companies having funds set up within the company for you know, success sharing, reward sharing programs. But this is something that he gave from his own pocket, which which was pretty significant, pretty phenomenal. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that that makes your employees

really want to work hard for you. And they did the nineteen hundred, So we're talking about the the turn of the century, unless you want to say nine one is technically the turn of the century, which I would I would agree with you. But nineteen hundred that's when they introduced the Brownie camera, which was probably the most famous camera I would say that Kodak and it's it's one of those that was synonymous with the Kodak name

for a really long time. Oh yeah, yeah, And it was really sort of marketed to kids because it had the Brownie name and you know, the little elf that they used on the packaging. But here's here was the conversion I did. Yes, because it was one dollar. It made it available for one dollar, which in today's money would be two cents, or uh, if you took one dollar in today's dollars, that would actually be twenty eight

dollars and twenty cents. There you go. Yeah, and the film was sold for fifteen cents a roll, which was around four dollars ye, which really, when you think about it, is not terribly expensive. It was it was meant to be something that that the the average person could afford effectively. Right. Yeah, so for one one buck you could go out and buy a Brownie camera. So yeah, that was I mean,

that was again another revolution. It was suddenly making the camera technology not just available because it's sold to consumers, but available because it's affordable. Uh yeah. And then it just really sort of launched this this endo street in the United States and then across the world. So uh.

And then nineteen o one, the Eastman Kodak Company of New Jersey, which became the parent company of the entire corporation, formed and uh, Eastman became the president of the New Jersey Holding Company, and Strong, Henry A. Strong, became the head of the New York company h and would remain the head of the company until he passed away, which was but that's down the road a bit. Now we've talked about the camera and the film, um, and those

two things are of obviously paramount importance. Yeah. I did that on purpose. UM. So it's a good touchstone. Um. I thought I had you out fox, But we want to play this game now, are we? There's a piece that that we're missing, and that's what happens after you take the photo. Um. You know, doing dark room work can be intensely rewarding, especially if you're cooped up in that room with a lot of developing chemicals and you still animals dancing around the room. Exactly. Hey, all the

photos are coming to life. Really. But there's also you know, Kodak realized that it could make strides on the other side, to the processing side and the processing side. And this was when they introduced the Kodak Developing machine, which made it so much more simple. You didn't have to have a dark room. You could you could PLoP the film in the machine and it would do it for you. Um. This is this is nice for amateurs who want to

do this themselves. Um. And that's the three See, these are these are all things that seems sort of trivial today, but they weren't at the time. Non curling film. Uh, for the next thirty years, the the non curling film was the one that people use. So why would anyone want film that didn't just slide a thing across the ice and sweet shape as in curly you know. Oh never mind, I'm going to jump ahead, okay, nineteen I'm forcing us forward. Well, they I thought you were going

to mention you thought I was, but I'm not. Okay, do you have something that you really need to say about nineteen o eight. Well, the film at the time was sort of flammable because they were using a cellulose nitrate. Yes, it was, and they changed to cellulose a state in which made it more or acetate acetate, which made it more non Bernie Eppy friendly. Yeah, so we had fewer photographer fires than which was you know, again our producer appreciates. Yes,

I've only seen her catch on fire twice, so it's improving. Uh. In nineteen they built they had their sixteen story office building built in what is now three four three State Street, Rochester, and uh that sixteen story building would later become a nineteen story building because n they added more floors to it. Uh.

So that's the world headquarters. Uh them jumping ahead in nineteen seventeen, Kodak helped out in the war effort during World War One, and they developed aerial cameras so that the US Signal Corps could take photos reconnaissance photos during the war. So that was a really kind of during that time. I mean, there were a lot of companies that were all dedicating a lot of effort to try and support the United States in this World War. I mean it was the very first World War, so it

was it was a huge deal. Yeah. They also used that cellulose acetate um for the coding airplane wings and developing lenses for gas masks that wouldn't break, which is uh, you know, hey, they had it on hand, and so ine again showing what sort of company this was. Eastman Savings and Loan Association was was formed and it was to help employees UH finance home purchases. So that was actually a pretty big deal that the company had created this institution to help its employees find and secure places

to live. And eventually that would split off to become a credit union. Um. They started making it possible. Now we we were talking about the motion picture film earlier, but UM in n three they started making motion picture film available in sixteen millimeter format for UH for amateurs UM, and that was you know, black and white stuff. They also made the sene Kodak motion picture camera and the

Codascope projector UM, so you could do everything. You could shoot the photos they had film for it, and you could you could show home movies to your board friends, I mean to your friends when they would come over the vacation. Um. And then uh, well they actually improved on that when they developed a uh when they made a color photo felt her color movie film for an amateur motion picture people. This is quickly becoming even more irritating than when we did Resberry Pie. Yeah, I agree,

um yeah. And then they started in making it possible to use sound on motion pictures. Now we talked about that in a previous podast with a special magnetic strip where the sound information is recorded. That's that's next to the actual images that you're capturing. Um. Just as a note, all along this process, uh, Kodak has been creating businesses

to supply its business. So a few years before that, they they had started a company to manufacture would alcohol for the film base and um they're also doing other uh groups, a gelatine corporation to help with the film. So they're they're really creating their own infrastructure within the company, which is very helpful because it makes them a very solid player. They don't have to depend on somebody else

to supply these materials. To write two. This was a big year for Kodak, and one positive way in one negative way. In thirty two, that's when they introduced the first eight millimeter amateur motion picture film cameras and projectors. So now people can make home movies with eight millimeter or film. Again that's a standard now. Yeah, yeah, I had That's why I had an eight millimeter camera, had

eight millimeter film at home. I haven't. I don't have a projector for it, but you know, old home movies from the family. Well that's also the year that George Eastman passed away, Yes, and he left his entire estate to the University of Rochester, so again showing that he was he was he was really he really believed in giving back to the community and giving back to the people that he felt helps support him. So that was

pretty pretty phenomenal. Yeah, he really believed, just as in the side, he really believed in education to um and he would he donated money to to help kids. He donated money for cause is that were important to him like um he uh. He was very into music and felt that to have to to have a successful musical community in a town, you really needed to educate people

about music so that they would appreciate it more. Um. And that's where the Eastman's the money for the Eastman School of Music, which is a prestigious school, Uh came about. I mean he's he was. He was really into education and helping people become aware of the importance of art and um, you know, basically education in general in the community. So there's you know, there are a lot of institutions in in Rochester. If you if you've ever been there,

it's a it's a great town. I've been and uh I should say city, um and uh it's it's a really neat place. But a lot of places in in in Rochester bear his name because of the contributions he made sure. So in thirty five, they introduced the first commercially available amateur color film, the Coda Chrome film. A lot of people still they just they yeah. Uh. Code of Chrome really made a name for itself because of the richness of color. And it was kind of unusual too,

because it was black and white. It was during the developing process that the color was aware. You you would actually notice that there was color there because of the chemicals used to to develop It was kind of fascinating to me. Um anyway, Yeah, nineteen jumping in a nineteen thirty seven they introduced the first slide projector slide, which was you had to slide at a time. Yeah, so not only could you bore your your friends with your family photos, but you could take a really long time

doing it. Yes, they'll fix that later though. So where do you want to jump to from here? Well, they again they did all kinds of things in the ready amount for its code of chrome film. Um. You know, as soon as you got the the process the slides back from the processing lab, you you could you could put them together. Um, all kinds of stuff. Cotacomb Coda color film for Prince in two. That was the first

color negative film. This was different from the Coda chrome. Um. Yeah, the negative itself had had color in it, not black and white. Yea. And the Army. Uh, actually, the the United States military gave uh the company an e Award for High Achievement in the production of equipment and film for the war effort. So they helped out in World War two as well. Um. Then of course, you know, they made transparency film in the late forties. Um, they

began looking at other other companies too. They started making, uh, this is kind of weird synthetic vitamin an. Yeah, there's some parts of Codex history where if you're not really familiar with it, if you're only familiar with their cameras, you're thinking, what, Yeah, but this to be one of them. Like like many large companies, they realized the benefits of diversification and that is what I think will save Kodak once it manages to make its way out of UH

Chapter eleven bankrupts. It's just a balance between diversification and not going so far outside your core business that you are getting involved in something you have really pardon upon no business in. Yeah, they eventually would would stop manufacturing vitamin a, but they did get into UH you know, we like to manufacture vitamin a. See the way it works is that you actually syntheticamin Yeah, in nineteen seventy three.

But they did get into UH Television Recording UM along with Dumont Laboratories and NBC in uh UM, and then they they started getting into safety film for the motion picture industry. In eight they got an oscar as a matter of fact for that UM, and then Codex earned a couple of oscars over for its country Usians. Effect. One of the things they were very proud about was that up until until fairly recently, every single motion picture that has won the Best Picture category was filmed on

Kodak film. That's impressive. The digital era is starting to change that. But you know, during the film era that was that was true. Yep, yep. They started uh producing the Kodak Colorama display transparencies which were they projected onto the main Terminal four at Grand Central Station in New York that was eighteen feet high and sixty ft wide. You know, that's a lot of megapixels, really confused, a lot of a lot of weight. What's that up there,

travelers there? Yeah? Um. And then of course in fifty one they did the eight millimeter Brownie movie camera and movie projector. In fifty two. Um, they had the the Kodak Brownie Star Matic in fifty seven. Oh, in fifty four, though, you know, there's some people that prefer the look of black and white and try X is when they released tri X film, which is high speed black and white. I've used try X um and it's a it's a good film. Um. But yeah, I mean they were still

they were still doing both black and white and color. Well, a lot of newspapers were still shooting black and white because they couldn't they didn't have color press. And this is this is again showing that you know, they'd really although they were looking at diversification, their core business was still very much in the film world. UM. Most of these innovations have to do with either the film process

itself or the technology of the camera. They did get into a polyester textile fiber by Tennessee Eastman, which was the wood alcohol company we mentioned before in UM, but they started releasing a high speed ectochrome film, the fastest color film in the market UM and they had fully automatic exposure control in fifty nine on the Codak cameras. In sixty one they finally produced a code carousel projector, so now you no longer had to front load that slide.

Actually there were other there were other slides slide projectors they introduced before that, but the carousel projector is the one that I familiar with. Yeah, that that's the one with a big wheel that has all the slides in it. Chunk, chunk, chunk. You know. There were many a day in my my school days when we were treated to slide shows and then the entire class shouting out, it's backwards, you know,

when the slides in the wrong way and it's upside down. Yeah, that was that was the best one, which was the upside down and then you have to take it out put it back in um. But yeah, that's well, that's where I think we get the concept of the slide show from this carouseler. Yeah, things like like you know in keynote or power point where you're using slides or

even you know the Google ones. There's lots of different presentation ones, but we talk about each one's a slide that comes all the way back to these days when we use these slide projectors. And of course, by this point in the mid nineteen sixties, Kodak is a worldwide name. You know, everybody knows who they are, most one of the most recognizable corporate names in the world. And you know, two they exceeded one billion dollars in revenue. That's a

lot of money in nineteen sixty's a lot of money. Now, if you don't think so, feel free to send Jonathan Strickland one billion dollars. I will be happy to dispose of your paltry some Again. You can go to the website and pick out more. I'm looking for famous names like in nineteen sixty three the in stematic camera. Yeah, the instematic which was we had one of those stematic Uh. That to me is immortalized in the great Wonderful folk song by Weird Al Yankovic, the Biggest Ball of Twine

in Minnesota. Then Bernie ran away with my brand new in Stematic. But at least we have our memories. Well, they made more than fifty million of them by nine seventies, so in in seven years um and then of course, uh, you know, Code of Chrome to made its debut in n you know, the sequel, it's never quite right. Nineteen sixty six they came out with the Kodak, which was a color printer. Again, this is important because this is a new line of business for them, that that is starting.

You know, they had had electronic memory, could do two thousand and three thousand prints an hour, So that's important. Ye, this printer technology, that's what they're really banking on today. Ye, that's what they're switching their focus. And the Space program used a used um Kodak film to take a photo of the creater Copernicus on the Moon. The Lunar Orbiter two used a dual lens camera film processor and readout

device all Kodak brand YEP. And then over the next few years they continued to develop more advances in movie film technology and their camera technology, and fabrics and fabric codel polyester fibers. I didn't realize that codel. You know, you'd think the name would have cluded me in, but I never realized that was them. Yeah, well is the next really big development? Again? Man, I told you that all the time. I know, you start to realize how

frequently use the same words. Right, So they were also doing a Yeah, the duplicator, the act to print one copier duplicator was invent But but the other big thing in seventy five was the development of the first digital camera. Yeah, see this was done again. Kodak has been doing research. They realized early on that research and development were important. Um, like Bell Labs, like many other companies HP and so Kodak.

Somebody at Kodak created a digital camera. They actually used the sensor that was created at Bell Labs and built a digital camera which was a point one megapixel black and white camera in n and they promptly told that guy to put it away where nobody was gonna see. Yeah, it would be a while before Kodak would really start

to get into digital photography and digital products. However, it is important to note that they were working on this that far back in time and they realized, you may say, why didn't they totally get into this and spend them They realized what effect this would have on their entrenched businesses. They knew that then, so they knew that there needs to be some sort of transition between film and digital or else they would through through innovation, they would put

themselves out of business. Yeah, I I make that joke, um, but I don't mean to, uh to suggest that they would really, you know, hide this away, But they really they knew what what an innovation this was, and they they had it in the back of their heads. Yeah. So nineteen eighty they celebrated their one anniversary, So happy one hundred years in nineteen eighty uh. In in unrelated news,

Star Wars Empire Strikes Back came out. Kodak introduced what many of my friends had now, I think this is sort of a forerunner of today's point and shoot cameras that we actually so was the instematic for that matter, but not like the form factor of the disc camera which showed up in the eight two, which if you

didn't if you are unfamiliar with it. UM. Rather than having a cartridge with film that scrolls across where the shutter is and the viewfinder so that you can, you know, take a picture that way, the viewfinders sort of off to the side, because there's a it looks like a daisy wheel or a flower of of photo negatives so that the phone the film is on a disk. You dropped the disk into the camera and it rotates to to make the exposures. Now, people who were real photographers

complained about the quality of these photos because they're very tiny. UM. However, they were very popular because they were flat and easy to carry. And I was also in eighty two when UH they had their pavilion open at Epcot. Yes, I've been to it. I have as well. UH. In eighty three they introduced the Kodak CAR four thousand information system, which helped with the storage and retrieval of microfilm images.

They also were getting into and they had been doing this all the way back to helping out with the whole X rays thing, really getting into the medical fields, helping develop technology specifically for medical UH purposes and not necessarily tools like a syringe or something, but more like camera and imaging tools specifically for medical procedures and medical tests. Absolutely. Yeah. They created the Eastman Pharmaceuticals division in eighty six, just

to get ahead of myself for a little bit. There were a couple of things though, that I wanted to note. In eighty four they started producing uh, floppy disks for computers. They made video cassettes and eight millimeter beta and VHS formats covering their basis. If you guys don't know what beta is, ask your parents, or they probably don't know either unless they worked in Yeah. Really um. And they also came out with the mini lab in eight five.

I remember this when when people started offering the mini labs for fast developing in the corner photoshop, they were just tiny Laborador retrievers. In eighty six, also in addition to their pharmaceuticals division, they started making batteries, the Ultra Life lithium power cells and the super Life batteries. I have bought some, um and uh, you know, so this is this is important again. They're getting into other kinds of of these other categories of businesses, but not completely unrelated.

I mean they've been in these are all chemical related businesses for the most part. Um. I remember the introduction of the fling in seven to the one time use cameras, um, and then he acquired Sterling Drug in eighty eight, which was kind of that was that was one of those moves that where seems kind of odd, and they would

actually end up divesting themselves of much of that business. Uh. Anything that didn't have to do with imaging, you know, anything that was health related but was still an imaging part of the industry they kept. But anything that was

non imaging health related they divested themselves of. In yeah, um, just sort of skipping ahead bits and pieces because we're getting kind of late here, um, but really they're they're continuing to innovate through this time in printers, uh, copiers and the other corsposable camera, disposable cameras, and they they created a recycling program to which is kind of ahead

of its time. So it just makes me think of there's an episode of the Office where the receptionist, the new receptionist, Aaron, says she loves disposable cameras, but she thinks it's such a sad waste because she doesn't understand that you take them in to get the pictures developed. She takes photos and then throws the camera a So for her, it's just the process of taking the photo

that's joyous, yes, because you don't actually get a photo afterwards. Yeah, that's not how those work people, not that not that many people use those anymore, like so that I do see them at things like weddings where the disposable cameras left at the center of the table so you can snap photos that will be you know, disposed of after the ceremony, right, and everyone's just like, here's another picture of Bill with a wedding cake on his nose. Yeah, fantastic.

In if you have to have a Nicon F three, you might have been in luck because that was when they when Kodak came out with the professional digital camera system. So if you had an F three, you could use uh this system with a with develop by Kodak with a one point three megapixel sensor today sounds just like which is a fairly small format but probably big enough for most news photos, I would imagine, especially at the

time that was that was pretty on top of things. Yeah. Um, and then they started making a writable CDs UM and uh, you know, continuing to to innovate for other uh it's it's core lines. UM. They did digitally restore Walt Disney's Snow White and seven Dwarfs Dwarves Dwarfs. Yes, no, no v, I know it's only Tolkien that does the V I know. Uh. Kodak Royal Gold film, which was I remember a popular color film, came out in UM and they launched their

website dot com. Yeah. Back then, websites were the pretty new so yah. Kodak was trying to create a presence on the web where they could show off all their different products and services. And yes, they were there right there, you know, not at the very leading edge, but pretty close. Yeah. Yep. They came out with the Advanced Photo system where you drop in the film cartridge and you could changed the

film before you shot all the film. They also came out with It's Advantas line, which was sort of moderately popular. Were supposed to be an advanced photo uh you know system yep. Uh. In nine they had another pretty interesting innovation. This was with a partnership with Sanyo Electric Company. They showed off the very first commercial model of a full color organic electroluminescent display or Yeah, so we're just now starting to see television sets that have o LED displays

at a size larger than just a few inches. A few years ago, a twelve inch oh LED screen was probably the biggest you would see at something like CS. But this past ces of I saw oh LED screen, well, you know, we go all the way back to to see those first shown off. So that's uh, it's been

a long journey. We're still not and we're still not to the point where oh lad technology is cheap enough to manufacture that's going to be within the grasp of the average consumer, because we're talking about ten thousand dollar television sets right now, which I don't know about you, but it's a little outside my price range. Yeah, yeah, um,

they were. They also divested themselves of the digital printer, copier and roller assembly operations to a company in Germany, but they didn't continue to make imaging film for healthcare.

Um that came out with lines of digital uh photo photo outfits in the early two thousands, Yeah, and two thousand one that came up with the Kodak Easy Share system, which a lot of their their digital cameras have that easy share branding on them, and it's all about the ability to port digital photos from one thing to another as seamlessly as possible. Uh. And these days it would mean things like you would, you know, connect your camera to your computer and it would just pull things over

directly into say Facebook, that kind of stuf um. You know. And then these products are very popular. I mean they ranked highest in customer satisfaction and a couple of price segments in the g D Power and Associates survey in nineteen or two thousand for them. Sorry, um, so I mean they're still they're still making very popular photography products. Um. But you know that this this ended up not lasting forever.

I mean the lists of things that they're working on, um, you know are are extensive for this period of time. But unfortunately, you know that the company is still very involved with film. Yeah, and it wasn't until two thousand nine that they retired code of Chrome color film that which made a lot of people and still makes a lot of people very unhappy because nothing quite shoots like CODA chrome. Yeah, it made a lot of people unhappy, but not enough people for them to keep the product going.

So this was this was the thing was that Kodak was holding onto those film products uh longer than the market was actually able to support them. So you have this big company that has a storied history in film, and there's still plenty of photographers who very much value film and films place in art and an industry, but

there's just there's a diminishing returns. There are fewer and fewer of the photographers, and a lot more of them are switching over to digital, either because they prefer it or because they feel that it's necessary, because that's just

the way the world is moving. And so the the returns for Kodak were decreasing year over year and they had to make these tough decisions, and a lot of people I've recently anyway that I've read, have suggested that perhaps they waited too long, and that's part of why they're in the financial position they're in today. Yeah. Yeah.

The thing is Code of Chrome is remember we were talking about how it's black and white and the color is is produced through the developing process that's a very specialized developing process, and it became the kind of thing that uh wasn't that, you know, although Kodak made uh, photography cheaper and easier for the average Joe or Jane

to get into. Um code of chrome became something that the serious photographer did, and you know it required a special developing process, and you know, at a certain point that becomes uh, too cost prohibitive for the manufacturer of the film and the producing See, they were involved in all that stuff. So it was, you know, they're making it for a very few people, and so it just became too expensive. But I think I think Kodak is

gonna pop back. They have so much intellectual property. They you know, were wise to invest in a diversity of products that were sort of related to the core um group of products, and I think I think they'll make it. They're just gonna need to do some restructuring and invest themselves of things that they don't, uh, they don't make

as much money on. Sadly, that's cameras in this It's it's interesting because even though they are getting out of the them or a business, they're still going to be making money off cameras because they hold this intellectual property, these patents that they have licensed off to other companies,

So they are making money from camera technology. It's just they're not they're not making cameras themselves anymore, um, and they're still doing other stuff, So we wouldn't call them like a you know, when we did our our episode about patent trolls and the companies that all they do is hold patents and then that's how they make money. It's not that Codex going down that route, but they

are definitely shifting over. So yeah, that's the that's the story of Kodak as it as it UH stands today today being in February, and UH, it'll be interesting to see what the future of this company is and whether or not they will be able to reinvent themselves in such a way to become another industry leader, perhaps in a totally different industry. It's kind of funny though that one of the UH, the technologies that on which they were really on the bleeding edge, ended up massive changing

the world in which it inhabited. I mean, they really created an industry in a lot of ways, and UH also created a technology that destroyed that industry, or is destroying it or maybe Okay that's too strong, changing it so dramatically that it that is causing the company to have to completely restructure its corp. Yeah, yeah, I think

if they could. I think if they could invent a time machine, they'd go back to nine and say, um, guys, let's not do this yet, or go back and say, let's invent the digital stuff that we're gonna need before this film thing takes off, right right, or or let's let's really concentrate on digital and do it before anyone else and do it better than anyone else. Yeah, there are a lot of There are a lot of wood. Yeah,

that's that's the way it works right now. I think I think it's it's definitely uh, it's definitely not a sad story. It's just kind of a you know, it's sad to see them stop making cameras. Yeah, so we'll we'll keep your eyes on them and see what happens. If you guys have suggestions for or topics that we should cover, whether it's another company, whether it's a person, a specific kind of technology, let us know. You can

tell us on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled, There is text stuff h s W or shoot us an email. Our address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com. And Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you