KODAK (By María Fernanda Díaz Bernal)
Kodak (The Eastman Kodak Company) is an american technology company that it's focused on imaging products, with photography as its main topic. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, United States and incorporated in New Jersey.
HISTORY
In 1884, the american inventor George Eastman patented photographic film stored in a roll. It only took him four years to perfect the first camera to take an advantage of his creation.
In 1892, the company was founded in Rochester, New York, United States. Its name comes from three principal concepts that Eastman used in order to create the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else.
First Kodak camera
In 1900, it was launched The Brownie camera with a price of $1. That brought photography to the mass market. The basic cardboard box took square image on 2 ¼ film.
In 1920, an “Autographic feature” gave a means for recording data on the margin of the negative at the time exposure. This feature was supplied on all Kodak cameras except for a box camera designed for making panoramic pictures.
Also in 1920, Tennessee Eastman was established as a wholly owned subsidiary. The manufacture of chemicals, such as asacetyls, needed for Kodak’s film photography became the main purpose of the company.
In 1930, the company launched on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index, where it remained for 74 years.
In 1932, at age 77 George Eastman died because he took his life with a gun shot.
In 1935, Kodak introduced a color reversal stock for movie and slide film, called Kodachrome.
In the period covered by 1949 and 1956, Kodak introduced the retina series 35mm camera.
In 1959, Kodak introduced the first automatic Brownie camera called The Starmatic Camera, which sold 10 million units over the next five years.
George Eastman and Thomas Edison
In 1963, Kodak introduced and inexpensive, easy to load, point-and-shoot camera called Instamatic.
In 1969, the film used on the Apollo 11 missions was produced by Kodak. Each double-perforated 70mm roll could capture 160 colour pictures or 200 black and white images.
In 1975, an engineer from Kodak named Steven Sasson created the 3.6kg device that stored images on cassette tape, had a 0.01mp resolution and took 23 seconds to expose each image. This made Kodak the first company to build a working digital camera.
In 1976, a researcher called Bryce Bayer created the Bayer Pattern color array (CFA). The order in which dyes are placed on an image sensor photosite is still in use nowadays. The basic technology is still the most commonly used of its kind to date. Also, during this year, Kodak introduced the first Kodamatic, an instant picture camera, using a similar film and technology to that of the Polaroid company. In addition, Kodak had a 90% market share for photographic film and 85% share of camera sales in the United States.
In 1986, some scientist of Kodak invented the world’s first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels and producing a photo quality 12.5 com x 17.5 cm print.
In 1994, Apple launched one of the first consumer digital cameras, the QuickTake. It was designed by Kodak and it currently had been released months before Apple’s version in Japan under its own name. The camera took photos at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels.
In 2003, Kodak introduced the Kodak EasyShare LS633 Digital Camera, the first camera to feature an AMOLED display, and the Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock 6000, the world’s first printer-and-camera dock combination.
In 2005, in the United States Kodak was the largest seller of digital cameras, with revenue reaching $5.7 billion. By 2007, it had fallen to fourth place by 2010 to seventh.
ECONOMY OF KODAK
The film industry was wildly successful for decades and that it’s why Kodak was so single-mindedly set on protecting its core business. At its top point, about 70% of the United States film market, buyer or otherwise, was locked up for Kodak, and the company had a strong international distribution as well. Kodak was selling a lot of film and it was making a lot of money.
Kodak had a huge success due to its advertising campaigns. The company successfully persuade families to become archiver of those airy moments, which could be captured for the eternity in a photograph caught on film. When they had an strong market of consumers, Kodak used its campaigns to make people use it products.
In 1962, Kodak employed 75.000 people and earned more than $1 billion in United States sales. In an industry that was almost their own creation, they had a huge success and an incredible position over more than 70 years. They achieved that due to their focus on selling inexpensive cameras to keep consumers buying their films. The most important thing to Kodak was to protect their interest in film photography.
KODAK AND COLOR
In 1935, Kodachrome was introduced, followed by Agfacolor in 1936. They were designed primarily for amateur home movies and slides. These were the first films of the integral tripack type, coated with layers of differently color sensitive emulsion, which is usually what is meant by words “color film” as commonly used.
The first color negative films and corresponding print films were modified versiones of these films. They were introduced around 1940 but only came into wide use for commercial motion picture production in the early 1950’s. In United States, Eastman Kodak’s Eastmancolor was the usual choice. (Taken from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_motion_picture_film)
Kodachrome came in every format - 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm, 120, 116, 828- and it facilitate the creation of color movies and rich color photos in print publications.
The Kodachrome process — in which three emulsions, each sensitive to a primary color, are coated on a single film base — was the brainchild of Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes, two musicians turned scientists who worked at Kodak's research facility in Rochester, N.Y. Disappointed by the poor quality of a "color" movie they saw in 1916, the two Leopolds spent years perfecting their technique, which Kodak first utilized in 1935 in 16-mm movie film. The next year, they tried out the process on film for still cameras, although the procedure was not for the hobbyist: the earliest 35-mm Kodachrome went for $3.50 a roll, or about $54 in today's dollars. (Taken from http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1906503,00.html)
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