A brand name that has come to define a photogenic moment, Kodak made the once expensive and complicated hobby of photography accessible and affordable to the common man.
 

From the late 1800s to the 1980s, Kodak dominated the consumer photography market — an innovative and admirable icon of American industry. It has won Emmys and Academy Awards,

sent cameras into space and is credited with creating the digital camera.
 

With the sad news that the company is now struggling to stay afloat, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the consumer history of Kodak, a firm that once represented the American dream, but who’s future looks like a nightmare.
 

"You Press the Button..."

 

High school drop out and bank clerk George Eastman's technological breakthrough in the late 1870s and 1880s was the development of dry film.

 

Previous to Eastman's invention, photography was an expensive, cumbersome and messy hobby. Cameras were enormous and the wet film required processing straight away.

 

In September 1888, New York-based Eastman registered the made-up brand name "Kodak" and offered the first branded camera, a handheld box-shaped model sold with the promise, "You press the button - we do the rest."

 

Further developments during the rest of the century and into the 1900s saw Kodak film improve, cameras get smaller and easier to use and the brand grow into one synonymous with the new medium of snapshot photography.

 

The Kodak Box BROWNIE

In 1900 the Kodak "BROWNIE" was introduced. This cardboard camera sold for $1, with film at 15 cents a roll.

 

The BROWNIE is credited with the democratization of photography -- bringing the medium into the financial reach of everyone.

 

Kodak continued to produce BROWNIES until the late 1960s, selling millions of models across the globe.

George Eastman's Death and Legacy

 

In 1932 George Eastman committed suicide.

 

An incurable degenerative spine disorder had left him in considerable pain with the prospect of being wheelchair bound.

 

He left a note which read: "To my friends. My work is done. Why wait?"

 

Eastman was not just referencing his work at Kodak, but his charitable efforts.

 

Eastman was one of the great philanthropists of his time, donating over $100 million to charitable causes, establishing schools for music, medicine, dentistry, and clinics for low-income families.

 

He left his estate to the University of Rochester while his home later became the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.

 

Eastman was buried in the grounds of Kodak Park in Rochester, New York.
 

Making Home Movies

It wasn't just still photography that Kodak helped make mass market -- its cine cameras did the same for home movies that the Brownie did for holiday snapshots.

 

In 1936 Kodak launched a "home movie camera," the CINE-KODAK Camera, a reasonably-priced gadget for the "man of moderate means."

 

The affordable and easy to use BROWNIE 8mm movie camera was introduced in the 1950s, and along with budget home movie projectors, saw millions of people around the world creating and watching home movies.

 

The Rise of the Compact

In 1957 cameras got even easier to use with the release of the first BROWNIE STARMATIC -- the first automatic snapper in a range of seven models.

 

Kodak sold 10 million STARMATICS in five years, an impressive figure later surpassed by the phenomenally successful INSTAMATIC range.

 

In excess of 50 million INSTAMATIC cameras were produced from 1963 to 1970, while in 1972 the INSTAMATIC got truly pocket-sized, marking a new era in popular photography with the true "compact" camera using smaller 110 film.

 

Over 25 million of these models were produced in three years

 

Kodak's success in the consumer photography market was such that by the late 1970s it enjoyed 85% of camera sales and 90% of film sales in the United States.

 

The Digital Era

In 1975 Kodak invented what was then referred to as a "film-less" camera.

 

Kodak researcher Steve Sasson, who later received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for invention, explains how the world's first digital camera worked.

 

"It took 23 seconds to record the digitized image to the cassette. The image was viewed by removing the cassette from the camera and placing it in a custom playback device. This playback device incorporated a cassette reader and a specially built frame store."

 

"This custom frame store received the data from the tape, interpolated the 100 captured lines to 400 lines, and generated a standard NTSC video signal, which was then sent to a television set."

 

This digital innovation didn't see a market launch until 1994 when Kodak unveiled one of the first digital cameras -- the 1.5-megapixel Nikon-based Kodak DCS 420 DSLR.

 

Kodak in the 21st Century

Despite beginning the century in the U.S. number two slot for digital camera sales, the Noughties were a disappointing decade for Kodak.

 

In 2004 Kodak killed sales of traditional film cameras in Europe and America but did not fill the vacuum with digital success.

 

In fact, it has only reported one full year profit since that milestone, has shed thousands of jobs, closed plants and sold various divisions.

 

Kodak's shares fell more than 80% in 2011 -- they are now at an all-time low. Its global staff count has shrunk to 19,000 from a high of 145,000. It has just been issued a warning by the New York Stock Exchange that its stock will be delisted if it can't top the $1 mark for the next six months.

 

The death of film photography, Kodak's lack of capitalization on its invention of the digital camera, increased competition from other camera manufacturers and the market-shrinking phenomenon of the cameraphone have combined to deal a possible death blow to the American business icon.