Kodak

Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester (NY), is an American film maker and camera maker. For at least three quarters of the 20th century it played the dominant role in worldwide photography business.

industrial centre of Rochester, N.Y., with Kodak headquarter buildings (left)

History

In 1879 George Eastman, amateur photographer and employee of a bank in Rochester, had invented an emulsion-coating machine for mass production of dry plates and got a patent on it in England. In 1881 he and Rochester's local buggy whip manufacturer Henry A. Strong founded the Eastman Dry Plate Company in the town in the north of the state of New York (USA).

1897: innovative strut folder
Folding Pocket Kodak
(version 1A of 1899)

In 1883, a year after having solved troubles with bad quality gelatine that spoiled film plates, the company moved to a four-story building which later got the address 343 State Street, longtime headquarter address of the company. In 1884 Eastman and Strong transformed their partnership to a corporation for which they gathered the first shareholders. In 1885 the American Film was introduced, a paper roll film which needed a special development process. This was used later in the first two Kodak cameras. However Eastman knew that he needed a transparent film for the future, and hired a chemist as research scientist. The transparent roll film could be delivered in 1889.

Eastman's goal in life was to simplify and to popularize photography. The first step towards that goal was the "Kodak" camera he introduced in 1888 which had a built-in 100-exposure paper roll film costing $25, a huge amount. The box camera had to be sent back to the factory once all the exposures had been used. The customers got their cameras back with new film roll loaded into it, and the image prints. In 1890 a Kodak folding camera with built-in 48 exposure film roll followed. After years of advertising the brand Kodak the company was renamed to Eastman Kodak Co. In 1900 Eastman had reached his goal, offering the Brownie rollfilm camera which cost only $1 including a 6 exposure film. Further film rolls cost just 15 cents. The Brownie camera series was continued until 1970.

Kodak used to have autonomous branches in other countries, which developed their own lines of products, as Ford did for cars. The German branch Kodak AG, which made the famous Retina models, is discussed in a separate page, as is Kodak Ltd. (UK). At its peak Kodak's international plants were

in Canada: Kodak Canada Limited, Toronto
in UK: Kodak Limited, several plants
in France: Kodak Pathé, several plants
in Germany: Kodak AG, Stuttgart (formerly Nagel)
in Australia: Kodak Australasia Pty. Ltd., Coburg
in Argentina: Kodak Argentina S.A.I.C., Buenos Aires
in Brazil: Kodak Brasileira Comércio e Indústria Ltda., Sao Paolo
in Mexico: Kodak Industrial, S.A. de C.V.

With exception of the Mexican plant all these international branches made cameras. The most U.S. plants outside Rochester were specialized on producing basic materials like gelatine (Peabody/Massachusetts),

Kodak used to stick a reminder onto
its cameras' backs to remind of the
appropriate sort of film

plastics (Longview/Texas), chemicals (Batesville/Arkansas), polyester fibre (Columbia/S.C.), and basic materials for film making and others (Kingsport/Tennessee). Some of the films and plates were made in Windsor/Colorado.

At its peak, the company was huge and made everything connected with photography: cameras, lenses (including some of the best lenses of the mid-20th century), film, and processing chemicals and equipment, in addition to photographic materials used in the graphic arts industry (for example, for printing). It also conducted important photographic research and development. 60.000 people were working for Kodak in Rochester. In 1966 the company had 100.000 employees worldwide.

The Star-cameras were million-sellers

The most popular Kodak cameras were the ones for 126 film cartridges. The first of these cameras was launched in 1963. Until 1976 60.000.000 Instamatic cameras had been sold, six times more than all competitors together sold of this camera type, and also six times more than Kodak's previous big success that it had with the Brownie Star camera series (10 Mio. Starflex, Starmite, and Starflash, made from 1957 to 1962). Another huge success was achieved with Kodak's type 110 pocket film cartridges and pocket cameras which were introduced in 1972. But this time the concurrent companies took a larger share of the market by abandoning own miniature film formats and introducing smart pocket cameras for 110 film instead. Kodak's decline began when it flopped with another miniature film format, the disc film, in the 1980s.

In the year 1976 camera engineer Steven Sasson developed Kodak's first digital still camera (for 0.1 megapixel black&white exposures), based on newest CCD technology. Kodak didn't realize the huge value of this invention and delayed the production of digital consumer cameras until it was too late to enter the digital market with the huge success that Kodak was used to have. In August 2006 it abandoned the production of digital cameras by outsourcing the production to Flextronics, an all-and-everything OEM manufacturer in Singapore.

35mm film

828 Bantam film

Roll film

Kodak No. 1

101 film

Kodak No. 2 Flexo

105 film

116 film

No. 1A Speed Kodak
No. 1A Pocket Kodak
Kodak No. 1A Folding Autographic Junior
Kodak No. 2A Folding Autographic Brownie
Kodak No. 2A Folding Pocket Brownie
Cartridge Hawk-Eye 2A

118 film

No. 3 Folding Pocket Kodak Model F

120 film

120 film, folder

Kodak No. 120
Kodak No. 2 Hawkette
Pocket Kodak No. 1
Pocket Kodak No. 1a
Pocket Kodak No. 2c
Pocket Kodak No. 3a
Pocket Kodak Junior No. 1
Pocket Kodak Junior No. 1a

Pocket Kodak No. 1 series II with autographic 120 film
Pocket Kodak No. 1a series II
Pocket Kodak Special No. 1
Pocket Kodak Special No. 1a
Pocket Kodak Special No. 2c
Pocket Kodak Special No. 3

120 film, box

No. 2 Beau Brownie (original Art Deco fancy camera)
Brownie Junior 120
50th Anniversary 1880 to 1930
Hawk-eye No. 2

122 film

No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak
No. 3A Autographic Kodak
No. 3A Autographic Kodak Special (1916: Kodak's first rangefinder camera)

123 film

No. 4 Folding Pocket Kodak Model B

127 film

620 film

616 film

Junior Six-16
Brownie Junior
Target SIX-16
Brownie Special six-16

Plate and sheet film

Folding plate cameras

Film Premo No.1
3A Film Plate Special Premo (3.25x5)

large format

Kodak Master View Camera 4x5
Eastman View Camera No. 2-D (5x7)
Eastman View Camera No. 2-D (8x10)

Cartridge film

126 film

Instamatic 44
Instamatic 50
Instamatic 100
Instamatic 104
Instamatic 124
Instamatic 134
Instamatic 204
Instamatic 304
Instamatic 404
Instamatic 700
Instamatic 814

Hawkeye Instamatic R4
Instamatic S-10
Instamatic X-15F
Instamatic X-30
Instamatic X-35F
Instamatic X-45

110 film

Star 110 Camera
Pocket Instamatic 10
Pocket Instamatic 20
Pocket Instamatic 30
Pocket Instamatic 40
Pocket Instamatic 50
Pocket Instamatic 60
Fisher-Price 100 Camera
Mickey-Matic Camera

APS film

Special film

Kodak disc film

Kodak disc 3000
Kodak disc 4000
Kodak disc 4100

Instant film

Kodak Analyst
Kodak Champ Kodamatic
Kodak Colorburst 50

* Kodak Colorburst 250

Kodak EK2
Kodak EK4
Kodak EK6
Kodak The Handle
Kodak Happy Times (Coca-Cola) Camera
Kodak Kodamatic 960
Kodak Party Time
Kodak Party Time II
Kodak Partyflash II
Kodak Pleaser
Kodak Pleaser II
Kodak Trimprint 920
Kodak Trimprint 940

Digital

just display, no optical finder

Kodak Easyshare C433, C875
Kodak Easyshare LS755
Kodak Easyshare One 4MP, 6MP
Kodak Easyshare V530, V570, V603, V610, V705

display and optical finder

Kodak DC20, DC25, DC40, DC50 Zoom, DC200, DC200 Plus, DC210, DC210 Plus, DC215, DC220, DC220 Pro Edition, DC240, DC260, DC260 Pro Edition, DC265, DC290, DC3200, DC3400, DC3800, DC4800, DC5000
Kodak Easyshare DX3215, DX3500, DX3600, DX3700, DX3900, DX4330, DX4530, DX4900, DX6340, DX6440, DX7440, DX7630
Kodak Easyshare CX4200, CX4210, CX4230, CX4300, CX4310, CX6200, CX6230, CX6330, CX6445, CX7220, CX7300, CX7310, CX7330, CX7430, CX7525, CX7530

Kodak Easyshare CW330
Kodak Easyshare CD33, CD40, CD43
Kodak Easyshare C300, C310, C315, C330, C340, C360, C503, C530, C533, C603, C643, C663, C703, C743
Kodak Easyshare LS420, LS443, LS633, LS743, LS753
Kodak Easyshare V550, V705
Kodak Easyshare Z700, Z730, Z760

display and electronic finder

Kodak Easyshare DX6490, DX7590
Kodak Easyshare P712, P850, P880
Kodak Easyshare Z612, Z650, Z710, Z740, Z7590

DSLR

Nikon AF mount

Kodak DCS 100 (back attached to a Nikon F3)
Kodak DCS 200 (back attached to a Nikon F801s/N8008s)
Kodak DCS 410 (back attached to a Nikon F90/N90)
Kodak DCS 420 (back attached to a Nikon F90/N90 or F90X/N90s)
Kodak DCS 460 (back attached to a Nikon F90X/N90s)
Kodak NC2000 (back attached to a Nikon F90/N90 or F90X/N90s)
Kodak NC2000e (back attached to a Nikon F90X/N90s)
Kodak DCS 620 / DCS 620x (based on a Nikon F5)
Kodak DCS 660 / DCS 660M (based on a Nikon F5)
Kodak DCS 720x (based on a Nikon F5)
Kodak DCS 760 (based on a Nikon F5)
Kodak DCS Pro 14n
Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n

Canon EF mount

Kodak EOS-DCS 1 (back attached to a Canon EOS-1N)
Kodak EOS-DCS 3 (back attached to a Canon EOS-1N)
Kodak EOS-DCS 5 (back attached to a Canon EOS-1N)
Kodak DCS 520 (based on a Canon EOS-1N and also sold as Canon D2000)
Kodak DCS 560 (based on a Canon EOS-1N)
Kodak DCS Pro SLR/c

Nikon Pronea mount

Kodak DCS 315 (based on a Nikon Pronea 600i)
Kodak DCS 330 (based on a Nikon Pronea 600i)

Resources

photography related industry in Rochester (New York)

and in Rochester (Minnesota)

Conley

external links

graflex.org - Rudolf Kingslake's
"Optical industry in Rochester (N.Y.)"

Books:

KODAK Milestones, 1880-1980. Rochester 1980

Websites in English:

Kodak Classics by Mischa Koning ~ A site with manuals, historical background information, articles and pictures on nearly 500 Classic Kodak cameras.
The Kodak Collector's Page by Walker Mangum, with many information including an article about the Kodak roll film numbers by Thom Bell
Kodak manuals, booklets and other historical literature (some in PDF and some in HTML) at www.orphancameras.com
Kodak DCS series DSLRs at Photography in Malaysia
Flickr group "Kodak"

Websites in French:

Kodak page at Collection G. Even's site
Cameras and User manuals at www.collection-appareils.com