Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from houstoforoks dot com. This podcast is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Audible dot com, the Internet's leading provider
Speaker 1: of audio books, with more than one hundred thousand downloadable
Speaker 1: titles across all types of literature. For tex Stuff listeners,
Speaker 1: Audible is offering a free audiobook to give you a
Speaker 1: chance to try out their service. One audio book to
Speaker 1: consider is The Singularity Is Near When Humans Transcend Biology
Speaker 1: by Ray kirtzwil Kurtswile explores a future where man and
Speaker 1: machine are one and the same. Text Stuff is fascinated
Speaker 1: by the idea of singularity, and this is a great
Speaker 1: book to learn more about it. The Singularity Is Near
Speaker 1: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray kirtzwild available from Audible.
Speaker 1: To try Audible free to day and get a free
Speaker 1: audio book of your choice, go to Audible podcast dot
Speaker 1: com slash tech Stuff. That's Audible podcast dot com slash
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Well, Hello, there are kids, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. My name is Chris Polette and I am
Speaker 1: an editor at how Stuff Works dot com. Sitting across
Speaker 1: from me, as is typically the case when we talk
Speaker 1: about technology and stuff in the studio, that would be
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland, somewhere in La Mancha, in a
Speaker 1: place whose name I do not care to remember, a
Speaker 1: gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has
Speaker 1: a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps
Speaker 1: a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. Awesome, thank you.
Speaker 1: I actually know where that comes from. Yeah, yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: that's a brave New world. Get there, brave New world
Speaker 1: that's from. I thought that was Beowulf. It was that,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's the original first line of Chaucer's
Speaker 1: Canterbury Tales. It's actually what that is. You didn't recognize
Speaker 1: it because I didn't use the Middle English. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well that's no for that. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: full of beans this morning. Um. You know, frequently we
Speaker 1: you know, frequently when we talk about topics on tech stuff, Um,
Speaker 1: it's either something that's near and dear to our hearts
Speaker 1: or something specifically that somebody wrote in about and this
Speaker 1: is this is actually something sort of more toward the former,
Speaker 1: but it's also something that's hit the headlines, and it's
Speaker 1: probably near and dear to many of your hearts as well,
Speaker 1: because the company we're talking about it is going through
Speaker 1: some very rough times and it's somebody that it made
Speaker 1: a real difference to really the world. Yeah, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Kodak here and uh and yeah, Kodak has made
Speaker 1: a huge impact on technology, on photography in general, especially
Speaker 1: when it comes to the average person having a chance
Speaker 1: to get his or her hands on a camera, because
Speaker 1: before Kodak, photography was really a pretty limited field and
Speaker 1: it was just there really were there really were no
Speaker 1: consumer cameras. And the company itself has a very long history.
Speaker 1: It's over a century old. Yes, yes, and and really
Speaker 1: well for one thing, um, not long before we recorded this,
Speaker 1: in February, UM, the company declared Chapter eleven bankruptcy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was in January. And then and then a month
Speaker 1: later they made an announcement that really kind of showed
Speaker 1: how the company has changed dramatically. On February nine, Kodak
Speaker 1: announced that it was getting out of the camera business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean there's it's one thing to talk about
Speaker 1: all the businesses that camera that Kodak is in, um,
Speaker 1: you know, but it is made. It started out in
Speaker 1: the film business essentially, but moved quickly into cameras. And
Speaker 1: the idea of it that Kodak would stop making cameras,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of it's it's it's really kind of
Speaker 1: earth shaking to somebody who's grown up with it, right,
Speaker 1: it would be it's hard to it's hard to kind
Speaker 1: of what would you compare it to. It would be
Speaker 1: like if Apple said it was no longer going to
Speaker 1: make Max, like from now on, Apple was just going
Speaker 1: to concentrate on mobile electronics. It's even it's yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to come up with something that people
Speaker 1: can core business, right, Yeah, the thing that is most identified,
Speaker 1: and I guess you could argue that with Apple. Now
Speaker 1: the iPod in the iPhone have kind of supplanted the Mac.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it's hard to wrap your mind around it.
Speaker 1: So this means no more digital cameras or video cameras
Speaker 1: or even digital picture frames from Kodak. Instead, what they're
Speaker 1: going to focus their main core business on focus no
Speaker 1: longer will be cameras, It'll be printers. So I guess
Speaker 1: it's good that HP decided to continue it's consumer computer
Speaker 1: business and not focus primarily on consumer printers for its
Speaker 1: consumer side, because otherwise HP and Kodak would just be
Speaker 1: head to head they still are technically, but well, the
Speaker 1: apparently the bankruptcy filing included this information that as of September,
Speaker 1: the end of September, UH Kodak had about five point
Speaker 1: one billion dollars to its name. Unfortunately, it had six
Speaker 1: point seven five billion dollars in debt, including twelve million
Speaker 1: dollars that it owed to Nokia UM in Finland for
Speaker 1: royalties on intellectual property. So yeah, when you have more
Speaker 1: debt than you have money, that's what we call a
Speaker 1: bad thing. That's also what we call fresh out of college,
Speaker 1: at least in the United States. Well, uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's exclusive to the US, No, but there
Speaker 1: are a lot of places in Europe where taxes end
Speaker 1: up taking care of a lot of the I'm just saying, well,
Speaker 1: UM Kodak has quite a bit of UH intellectual property
Speaker 1: information UM and then tried to leverage that before it
Speaker 1: filed for bankruptcy. And there this is not really new stuff.
Speaker 1: Code struggling has been a result of the you know,
Speaker 1: the the burgeoning UH digital photography industry, which it has
Speaker 1: done somewhat of a you know, semi successful capitalization on.
Speaker 1: But and I think you could say right now, the
Speaker 1: digital photography has supplanted a film photography for all. But uh,
Speaker 1: there's a decreasing number of photographers who will use film.
Speaker 1: And it's not that film is is worse than than digital.
Speaker 1: In fact, there are a lot of photographers who argue
Speaker 1: the opposite, that there are qualities that you get with
Speaker 1: film that you cannot get with digital unless you were
Speaker 1: to spend countless hours trying to recapture something that film
Speaker 1: does naturally on its own. But that being said, the
Speaker 1: general consumer, it's it's almost all digital now. I mean
Speaker 1: that's what we have in our in our phones, it's
Speaker 1: what we have. Some m P three players have them, tablets,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's our our computers have a lot of
Speaker 1: cases have the camera built into the frame. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it would use them for you know, chatting and
Speaker 1: things like that, but you can also use them and
Speaker 1: take still photos. It would be very inconvenient if those
Speaker 1: were all film based. True. But yeah, so wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: I gotta take my laptop apart to get the film out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So some people say that Codex The reason why Kodak
Speaker 1: is in the position it's in now is that it
Speaker 1: did not adapt quickly enough. It did not commit fully
Speaker 1: enough to the digital revolution and stuck with the film
Speaker 1: side for consumer products maybe a bit too loyally. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe we were a little too adamant on keeping with
Speaker 1: that film side of the equation and not jumping enough
Speaker 1: over to the digital side. And uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to say whether back at the
Speaker 1: back when Kodak was making these calls, it was hard
Speaker 1: to tell that that was going to be the wrong call,
Speaker 1: right well. Uh, And it's also an oversimplification because Kodak
Speaker 1: was one of the pioneers of digital, because we're going
Speaker 1: to look at that in a moment. Plus uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they they've Kodak would have been in a much worse
Speaker 1: position or even gone by now if it hadn't diversified itself.
Speaker 1: I think we should take a look back, uh, starting
Speaker 1: from the beginning. And it and a guy that many
Speaker 1: of you know. He's a he's a tech pioneer, but
Speaker 1: his name is certainly familiar to It's it's a household
Speaker 1: name for many many people and has been especially in Rochester,
Speaker 1: New York, New York. So about George Eastman. George Eastman,
Speaker 1: who you know, he's not known as the brainiest inventor
Speaker 1: whoever lived. In fact, he was sort of an average guy.
Speaker 1: Um came out of an average home, ended up having
Speaker 1: to uh to jump right into the workforce and actually
Speaker 1: was a banker for a while too. He went to
Speaker 1: school to become a to improve himself and um ended
Speaker 1: up being a banker. But you know, he went on
Speaker 1: a vacation. This is kind of funny. He went on
Speaker 1: a vacation and wanted to be able to take pictures,
Speaker 1: so he bought a wet plate outfit. This is way
Speaker 1: photography was was done before Eastman got the idea to
Speaker 1: try to simplify things somewhat. And he had to buy
Speaker 1: a boatload of gear because yeah, because with wet plate photography,
Speaker 1: you have to have the plate wet with chemicals before
Speaker 1: you take the photo, and before it the plate dries,
Speaker 1: you have to develop the photo, so you have to
Speaker 1: keep the He had to buy a tent so that
Speaker 1: he could develop the photos of his vacation on the
Speaker 1: spot before the before the chemicals dried. That's somewhat inconvenient.
Speaker 1: And this is why professionals were the only people taking
Speaker 1: photos because nobody wanted to mess with this. It was expensive,
Speaker 1: it was a pain in the neck. And then came
Speaker 1: the development of the dry plate development. Are you gonna
Speaker 1: do that the whole podcast? Because I will quit right now.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is we use these terms, but these
Speaker 1: are totally photography terms. Okay, of the progression from what
Speaker 1: plate to dry plate? Um, So, yeah, he knew about this.
Speaker 1: This is not something that he invented that plate to
Speaker 1: dry plate, right. Dry plate meant that you no longer
Speaker 1: had to have those wet chemicals on the plates before
Speaker 1: you took your photo, and you didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about it drying out before before you had to develop it.
Speaker 1: But what he did because he came up with a
Speaker 1: an emulsion coding machine which allowed the mass production of
Speaker 1: dry plates, which was a big deal because that before
Speaker 1: then you were making dry plates one at a time,
Speaker 1: very slow, painstaking process, not efficient. There was no real
Speaker 1: way to make that a consumer market device at all
Speaker 1: because it just took too long to make them. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is this is one of those situations where he
Speaker 1: figured out he heard about these experiments people were doing
Speaker 1: with with a gelatine coating for the chemicals that you
Speaker 1: would use to capture an image. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that there's got to be a way to
Speaker 1: make this easier. And he spent long hours after he
Speaker 1: would go home from work, he would spend hours working
Speaker 1: in his mother's kitchen, UM trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a way to to make this a mass production affair.
Speaker 1: And they apparently he would they would find him in
Speaker 1: the morning. He would fall asleep on the floor in
Speaker 1: his clothes, coming home after a long day at the office,
Speaker 1: and he'd have to go back to work. So he
Speaker 1: spent a long time UH working on this process and
Speaker 1: a lot of elbow grease, really putting into the process
Speaker 1: of trying to come up with us. But no headlight fluid.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen eighty fluid. Yeah, I'll tell you later.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty he began to create the commercial production
Speaker 1: of these dry plates, and he rented Aloft in Rochester,
Speaker 1: New York. And this is the date that Kodak tends
Speaker 1: to trace its history back to, is an eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: when Eastman started to actually UH produce these dry plates
Speaker 1: and sell UH. And a year later Eastman partnered up
Speaker 1: with a guy named Henry A strong. Hey, you know
Speaker 1: you gotta go with somebody with it with a name
Speaker 1: like that. We well, and you know what he he
Speaker 1: made before he got into this whole film business, right,
Speaker 1: buggy whips. Yeah, when you if you have a strong
Speaker 1: buggy whip, you know you're in good hands. Was supposed
Speaker 1: to those weak buggy whips. I don't want to make
Speaker 1: any cracks about buggy whips. I can do it too.
Speaker 1: So anyway, they formed the partnership that they called the
Speaker 1: Eastman Dry Plate Company, which just rolls off the tongue
Speaker 1: and uh. And then that year that fall Eastman quits
Speaker 1: his job as a bank clerk and devotes his full
Speaker 1: attention to this business. Yep. So he he really believed
Speaker 1: that they were going to make a mark, I may
Speaker 1: make a name for themselves in this this business. And
Speaker 1: he was right. They were very successful, very early by three.
Speaker 1: So just two years after they had formed this partnership,
Speaker 1: they transferred over to a four story building in uh
Speaker 1: an address that we now know as three four three
Speaker 1: State Street, Rochester, New York. And if you were to
Speaker 1: visit that area, you would find Codex Worldwide headquarters. So
Speaker 1: they did not they did not venture far, No, not
Speaker 1: at all. Although the building looks completely it's it's a
Speaker 1: different building. It's what's now three four three State Street,
Speaker 1: so should make that clear. But in eighteen eighty four
Speaker 1: they changed the business and it it evolved from a
Speaker 1: partnership into a corporation with fourteen shareholders at with a
Speaker 1: it was a two hundred thousand dollar corporation, which in
Speaker 1: four that's a that's a big jung of change. I
Speaker 1: did not actually think to do the conversion to find
Speaker 1: out exactly how much that is in today's dollars, but
Speaker 1: I'll say lots. Yeah, I I only did one conversion,
Speaker 1: and that stuff for something that's coming up soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if it's the same thing. Probably, um yeah.
Speaker 1: And as a matter of fact, in four, that's when
Speaker 1: they introduced negative paper, which you know basically was paper
Speaker 1: that just complained about how nothing's going to work out.
Speaker 1: A lot of negative papers in college now, um this
Speaker 1: of course, uh, you know was anybody who's worked with
Speaker 1: film for cameras as uh, you know what you use
Speaker 1: to capture you know, you have the negatives are looks
Speaker 1: like and you know, hold it up to the light.
Speaker 1: It looks like the opposite of what you see when
Speaker 1: you print a photo. UM, and William H. Walker somebody
Speaker 1: who was working with the company, uh, invented a role
Speaker 1: holder for for negative. So this is this is just
Speaker 1: you know, this is trivia in a way, but it's
Speaker 1: not in another because these guys are inventing the way
Speaker 1: that you capture images for and and making it simpler
Speaker 1: and mass productive, you know, doing the mass production work
Speaker 1: for this stuff. So they're really inventing the photo business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because of these the work that these men did
Speaker 1: that the the consumer camera developed evolved the way it did.
Speaker 1: I know, but I just wanted to stop myself before
Speaker 1: I said it again didn't quite work. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if if someone else had made advances in the technology,
Speaker 1: perhaps cameras would have have been completely different. You know
Speaker 1: when you think of that role of film that if
Speaker 1: you've ever used a camera that actually used film and
Speaker 1: you had to put a roll of film in and
Speaker 1: feed the film over through a little feeder and then uh,
Speaker 1: they would take photos and you look at the exposure
Speaker 1: number on your camera. Uh. The reason why we do
Speaker 1: that is because the work these men did. If other
Speaker 1: people had done something else. Then cameras would have looked
Speaker 1: and behaved completely differently than the way that we think
Speaker 1: of them. Um. Yeah. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: this is in eighteen six, This is about the time
Speaker 1: that uh, Kodak sowed it's its roots of um sod
Speaker 1: its roots really sort of began, Yes, began looking at
Speaker 1: the possibility that they should be getting into other technologies.
Speaker 1: They were there, uh uh one of the very first
Speaker 1: companies in America that had a full time research scientist. Um.
Speaker 1: And he was looking at the creating a transparent film base. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, something that was flexible, it didn't have to
Speaker 1: be a solid plate like the existing photo technology was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first transparent photographic film came from Kodak, and it
Speaker 1: was right around that time. Uh. It was when Eastman
Speaker 1: founded the Kodak company. Yes, I I love the genesis
Speaker 1: of this name because now companies come up with names
Speaker 1: for themselves and from products by going through marketing groups
Speaker 1: and focus groups and trying to come up with, you know,
Speaker 1: the excitra things that were stir the passions. Eastman sat down.
Speaker 1: He liked the letter K because he felt like it
Speaker 1: was a strong letter and just played around with words
Speaker 1: he made up Kodak and you know, look at that.
Speaker 1: It's it's short, it's sweet, and people remember it's one
Speaker 1: letter off from being a bear. Also, I think he
Speaker 1: he also liked that the color yellow, the signature color
Speaker 1: yellow that they use on their packaging. Um, and he
Speaker 1: came up with the slogan, you press the button, we
Speaker 1: do the rest for the first camera. Now here again,
Speaker 1: it's twelve they've stopped producing cameras or are about to really? Um,
Speaker 1: So it was when they released their first camera. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Before that they were they were strictly film yes, and
Speaker 1: dry plate and dry plate. And now in eighty eight
Speaker 1: they've really released their first camera. This is giving birth
Speaker 1: to the era of snapshot photography. Yeah. In the sentence
Speaker 1: that huge. Yeah, this is what allows the average person
Speaker 1: to get a camera and not have a lot of
Speaker 1: training or expertise of fatiography and take pictures. Now again,
Speaker 1: we should stress that the quality of pictures is going
Speaker 1: to depend highly upon the type of camera and the photographer.
Speaker 1: We have a photographer as our producing today, and I
Speaker 1: just want to make it clear that we appreciate the
Speaker 1: intense level of skill that she has as a photographer.
Speaker 1: I I agree, Um, she's also scary. Um and and
Speaker 1: eighty nine was when the when Kodak released its first
Speaker 1: commercial transparent role film. UM. So this perfection that the
Speaker 1: release of the camera equipment, the release of the transparent
Speaker 1: role film. UM this is a complete revolution because it's
Speaker 1: it's made uh, photography available to the average person again.
Speaker 1: Um and Uh, this is when you know things started
Speaker 1: to really change. You Also at this time, though, you
Speaker 1: had to go into a dark area to load your
Speaker 1: camera because you don't want to expose your film and
Speaker 1: ruin it before you can take pictures. Because of course,
Speaker 1: the whole thing about film is that it has a
Speaker 1: chemical reaction when it's exposed to light, and that's what
Speaker 1: allows it to capture photos or pictures. If you were
Speaker 1: to expose that film to light before you were to
Speaker 1: use in a camera, then you would just ruin that
Speaker 1: that film. It would be it would be as if
Speaker 1: you had taken a photo already. Uh. That was completely
Speaker 1: uncontrolled circumstances. So you had to load it in a
Speaker 1: dark room until when they introduced their first daylight loading camera,
Speaker 1: which had the role protected the film in such a
Speaker 1: way that you could load the film into a camera advance.
Speaker 1: It the film, so that the little part that was
Speaker 1: exposed is beyond where you're taking the images and you
Speaker 1: just start snapping away. Yep. That's a a big difference
Speaker 1: because I can tell you trying to load film in
Speaker 1: the dark can be really annoying, especially if you drop it. Uma.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, we don't want to we don't
Speaker 1: want to discuss every little thing they've got on. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of information on the Kodak website
Speaker 1: about this type of stuff if you're really interested in
Speaker 1: the company, which is amazing, but you know, I want
Speaker 1: to capture some of the highlights. Um. You know they
Speaker 1: did change, yes, exactly, Well, they were the Eastman Company.
Speaker 1: They switched to the Eastman Company and then they became
Speaker 1: Eastman Kodak and capture the again capture to uh to
Speaker 1: really play off of the name Kodak um and uh,
Speaker 1: let's see. I mean the they basically grew for the
Speaker 1: next few years, just rapidly. They took off, they built buildings,
Speaker 1: they started moving outside the United States. Um. And then
Speaker 1: they announced the pocket Codac camera in which used role
Speaker 1: film and you hey, guess what, you could actually figure
Speaker 1: out where what what snapshot you were on because it
Speaker 1: had an indicator to tell you what number you Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm on number twelve, right, which is very useful when
Speaker 1: you are wondering how many photos you have left on
Speaker 1: the roll and you know, well, anyone who's used a
Speaker 1: film camera and they've wanted to go out and take
Speaker 1: pictures of stuff it does. It can be frustrating if
Speaker 1: you looked down and he said, oh, wait, I only
Speaker 1: have two photos left. Is this moment really worth capturing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or should I wait and and save those two photos?
Speaker 1: But before this you essentially had to keep track of
Speaker 1: it with yourself until you realize that, oh, the cameras
Speaker 1: not advancing any further because I've taken the last image.
Speaker 1: Anyone who's ever rolled his or her own film as
Speaker 1: I have also has had that problem because you go
Speaker 1: in the dark, you're sitting there and loading it. It
Speaker 1: feels like enough, you put it in the cartridge and
Speaker 1: then you start snapping photos and it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: there's a number on that because you really don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how many photos you've got. Um so yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they started moving into uh into Europe about this time,
Speaker 1: but oh yeah, they started while we had see through
Speaker 1: photos before because they invented the transparent film. But this
Speaker 1: is when they really got into uh see through stuff
Speaker 1: because they started making plates and paper for X rays, yes,
Speaker 1: which had only been discovered the year before. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they jumped on that very very quickly. I mean, Kodak
Speaker 1: at this point was one of the leading companies when
Speaker 1: it came to capturing and processing images. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that also in six they started promoting the first film
Speaker 1: especially made for creating motion pictures. They actually worked with
Speaker 1: some some inventor guy who also lived in New York.
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. No, No, that wouldn't it.
Speaker 1: Alexander grim bell Um, Steve Jobs. I'm just okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep giving wrong answers until you say the right one.
Speaker 1: Thomas Alva Edison, that guy. Yeah, I like to call
Speaker 1: him elephant shucker. Oh man. Yeah, I'm just mean, Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't kill an elephant with alternating current. Well technically
Speaker 1: he didn't. He just sanctioned it. Okay, um, fair enough,
Speaker 1: So that was only following orders, following orders. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So they didn't come up with the folding pocket codac camera, um,
Speaker 1: which was great if you had folding pockets. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you didn't. Well, well, this is this is the first
Speaker 1: to have the two and a quarter by three and
Speaker 1: a quarter inch negative, which was the standard size for
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years or so for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: in Eastman kind of showed what sort of boss he was.
Speaker 1: We you know, we if you listen to our HP podcasts,
Speaker 1: you learned about the founders of HP were very much
Speaker 1: about rewarding employees and and fostering a good corporate citizens
Speaker 1: sort of uh profile. Right, Well, Kodak is the same way,
Speaker 1: and Eastman very much believed in rewarding his employees in
Speaker 1: he gave them a bonus from his own personal money
Speaker 1: because he felt that they had worked so hard and
Speaker 1: done such good work for the company. So here's ten
Speaker 1: million dollars. Yeah, here's a man taking money from his
Speaker 1: own pocket to reward his employees. Not you don't see
Speaker 1: a whole lot of that today, Not not at the
Speaker 1: same level. No, No, I mean you might get like, ah,
Speaker 1: here you go, congratulations. Well, well, you see companies having
Speaker 1: funds set up within the company for you know, success sharing,
Speaker 1: reward sharing programs. But this is something that he gave
Speaker 1: from his own pocket, which which was pretty significant, pretty phenomenal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing that that makes your employees
Speaker 1: really want to work hard for you. And they did
Speaker 1: the nineteen hundred, So we're talking about the the turn
Speaker 1: of the century, unless you want to say nine one
Speaker 1: is technically the turn of the century, which I would
Speaker 1: I would agree with you. But nineteen hundred that's when
Speaker 1: they introduced the Brownie camera, which was probably the most
Speaker 1: famous camera I would say that Kodak and it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those that was synonymous with the Kodak name
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Oh yeah, yeah, And it
Speaker 1: was really sort of marketed to kids because it had
Speaker 1: the Brownie name and you know, the little elf that
Speaker 1: they used on the packaging. But here's here was the
Speaker 1: conversion I did. Yes, because it was one dollar. It
Speaker 1: made it available for one dollar, which in today's money
Speaker 1: would be two cents, or uh, if you took one
Speaker 1: dollar in today's dollars, that would actually be twenty eight
Speaker 1: dollars and twenty cents. There you go. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: film was sold for fifteen cents a roll, which was
Speaker 1: around four dollars ye, which really, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: is not terribly expensive. It was it was meant to
Speaker 1: be something that that the the average person could afford effectively. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so for one one buck you could go out and
Speaker 1: buy a Brownie camera. So yeah, that was I mean,
Speaker 1: that was again another revolution. It was suddenly making the
Speaker 1: camera technology not just available because it's sold to consumers,
Speaker 1: but available because it's affordable. Uh yeah. And then it
Speaker 1: just really sort of launched this this endo street in
Speaker 1: the United States and then across the world. So uh.
Speaker 1: And then nineteen o one, the Eastman Kodak Company of
Speaker 1: New Jersey, which became the parent company of the entire corporation,
Speaker 1: formed and uh, Eastman became the president of the New
Speaker 1: Jersey Holding Company, and Strong, Henry A. Strong, became the
Speaker 1: head of the New York company h and would remain
Speaker 1: the head of the company until he passed away, which
Speaker 1: was but that's down the road a bit. Now we've
Speaker 1: talked about the camera and the film, um, and those
Speaker 1: two things are of obviously paramount importance. Yeah. I did
Speaker 1: that on purpose. UM. So it's a good touchstone. Um.
Speaker 1: I thought I had you out fox, But we want
Speaker 1: to play this game now, are we? There's a piece
Speaker 1: that that we're missing, and that's what happens after you
Speaker 1: take the photo. Um. You know, doing dark room work
Speaker 1: can be intensely rewarding, especially if you're cooped up in
Speaker 1: that room with a lot of developing chemicals and you
Speaker 1: still animals dancing around the room. Exactly. Hey, all the
Speaker 1: photos are coming to life. Really. But there's also you know,
Speaker 1: Kodak realized that it could make strides on the other side,
Speaker 1: to the processing side and the processing side. And this
Speaker 1: was when they introduced the Kodak Developing machine, which made
Speaker 1: it so much more simple. You didn't have to have
Speaker 1: a dark room. You could you could PLoP the film
Speaker 1: in the machine and it would do it for you. Um.
Speaker 1: This is this is nice for amateurs who want to
Speaker 1: do this themselves. Um. And that's the three See, these
Speaker 1: are these are all things that seems sort of trivial today,
Speaker 1: but they weren't at the time. Non curling film. Uh,
Speaker 1: for the next thirty years, the the non curling film
Speaker 1: was the one that people use. So why would anyone
Speaker 1: want film that didn't just slide a thing across the
Speaker 1: ice and sweet shape as in curly you know. Oh
Speaker 1: never mind, I'm going to jump ahead, okay, nineteen I'm
Speaker 1: forcing us forward. Well, they I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to mention you thought I was, but I'm not. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you have something that you really need to say
Speaker 1: about nineteen o eight. Well, the film at the time
Speaker 1: was sort of flammable because they were using a cellulose nitrate. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was, and they changed to cellulose a state in
Speaker 1: which made it more or acetate acetate, which made it
Speaker 1: more non Bernie Eppy friendly. Yeah, so we had fewer
Speaker 1: photographer fires than which was you know, again our producer appreciates. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've only seen her catch on fire twice, so it's improving. Uh.
Speaker 1: In nineteen they built they had their sixteen story office
Speaker 1: building built in what is now three four three State Street, Rochester,
Speaker 1: and uh that sixteen story building would later become a
Speaker 1: nineteen story building because n they added more floors to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: So that's the world headquarters. Uh them jumping ahead in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, Kodak helped out in the war effort during
Speaker 1: World War One, and they developed aerial cameras so that
Speaker 1: the US Signal Corps could take photos reconnaissance photos during
Speaker 1: the war. So that was a really kind of during
Speaker 1: that time. I mean, there were a lot of companies
Speaker 1: that were all dedicating a lot of effort to try
Speaker 1: and support the United States in this World War. I
Speaker 1: mean it was the very first World War, so it
Speaker 1: was it was a huge deal. Yeah. They also used
Speaker 1: that cellulose acetate um for the coding airplane wings and
Speaker 1: developing lenses for gas masks that wouldn't break, which is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, they had it on hand, and so
Speaker 1: ine again showing what sort of company this was. Eastman
Speaker 1: Savings and Loan Association was was formed and it was
Speaker 1: to help employees UH finance home purchases. So that was
Speaker 1: actually a pretty big deal that the company had created
Speaker 1: this institution to help its employees find and secure places
Speaker 1: to live. And eventually that would split off to become
Speaker 1: a credit union. Um. They started making it possible. Now
Speaker 1: we we were talking about the motion picture film earlier,
Speaker 1: but UM in n three they started making motion picture
Speaker 1: film available in sixteen millimeter format for UH for amateurs UM,
Speaker 1: and that was you know, black and white stuff. They
Speaker 1: also made the sene Kodak motion picture camera and the
Speaker 1: Codascope projector UM, so you could do everything. You could
Speaker 1: shoot the photos they had film for it, and you
Speaker 1: could you could show home movies to your board friends,
Speaker 1: I mean to your friends when they would come over
Speaker 1: the vacation. Um. And then uh, well they actually improved
Speaker 1: on that when they developed a uh when they made
Speaker 1: a color photo felt her color movie film for an
Speaker 1: amateur motion picture people. This is quickly becoming even more
Speaker 1: irritating than when we did Resberry Pie. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: um yeah. And then they started in making it possible
Speaker 1: to use sound on motion pictures. Now we talked about
Speaker 1: that in a previous podast with a special magnetic strip
Speaker 1: where the sound information is recorded. That's that's next to
Speaker 1: the actual images that you're capturing. Um. Just as a note,
Speaker 1: all along this process, uh, Kodak has been creating businesses
Speaker 1: to supply its business. So a few years before that,
Speaker 1: they they had started a company to manufacture would alcohol
Speaker 1: for the film base and um they're also doing other
Speaker 1: uh groups, a gelatine corporation to help with the film.
Speaker 1: So they're they're really creating their own infrastructure within the company,
Speaker 1: which is very helpful because it makes them a very
Speaker 1: solid player. They don't have to depend on somebody else
Speaker 1: to supply these materials. To write two. This was a
Speaker 1: big year for Kodak, and one positive way in one
Speaker 1: negative way. In thirty two, that's when they introduced the
Speaker 1: first eight millimeter amateur motion picture film cameras and projectors.
Speaker 1: So now people can make home movies with eight millimeter
Speaker 1: or film. Again that's a standard now. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: had That's why I had an eight millimeter camera, had
Speaker 1: eight millimeter film at home. I haven't. I don't have
Speaker 1: a projector for it, but you know, old home movies
Speaker 1: from the family. Well that's also the year that George
Speaker 1: Eastman passed away, Yes, and he left his entire estate
Speaker 1: to the University of Rochester, so again showing that he
Speaker 1: was he was he was really he really believed in
Speaker 1: giving back to the community and giving back to the
Speaker 1: people that he felt helps support him. So that was
Speaker 1: pretty pretty phenomenal. Yeah, he really believed, just as in
Speaker 1: the side, he really believed in education to um and
Speaker 1: he would he donated money to to help kids. He
Speaker 1: donated money for cause is that were important to him
Speaker 1: like um he uh. He was very into music and
Speaker 1: felt that to have to to have a successful musical
Speaker 1: community in a town, you really needed to educate people
Speaker 1: about music so that they would appreciate it more. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's where the Eastman's the money for the Eastman
Speaker 1: School of Music, which is a prestigious school, Uh came about.
Speaker 1: I mean he's he was. He was really into education
Speaker 1: and helping people become aware of the importance of art
Speaker 1: and um, you know, basically education in general in the community.
Speaker 1: So there's you know, there are a lot of institutions
Speaker 1: in in Rochester. If you if you've ever been there,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great town. I've been and uh
Speaker 1: I should say city, um and uh it's it's a
Speaker 1: really neat place. But a lot of places in in
Speaker 1: in Rochester bear his name because of the contributions he
Speaker 1: made sure. So in thirty five, they introduced the first
Speaker 1: commercially available amateur color film, the Coda Chrome film. A
Speaker 1: lot of people still they just they yeah. Uh. Code
Speaker 1: of Chrome really made a name for itself because of
Speaker 1: the richness of color. And it was kind of unusual too,
Speaker 1: because it was black and white. It was during the
Speaker 1: developing process that the color was aware. You you would
Speaker 1: actually notice that there was color there because of the
Speaker 1: chemicals used to to develop It was kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. Um anyway, Yeah, nineteen jumping in a nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven they introduced the first slide projector slide, which
Speaker 1: was you had to slide at a time. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: not only could you bore your your friends with your
Speaker 1: family photos, but you could take a really long time
Speaker 1: doing it. Yes, they'll fix that later though. So where
Speaker 1: do you want to jump to from here? Well, they
Speaker 1: again they did all kinds of things in the ready
Speaker 1: amount for its code of chrome film. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: as soon as you got the the process the slides
Speaker 1: back from the processing lab, you you could you could
Speaker 1: put them together. Um, all kinds of stuff. Cotacomb Coda
Speaker 1: color film for Prince in two. That was the first
Speaker 1: color negative film. This was different from the Coda chrome. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the negative itself had had color in it, not black
Speaker 1: and white. Yea. And the Army. Uh, actually, the the
Speaker 1: United States military gave uh the company an e Award
Speaker 1: for High Achievement in the production of equipment and film
Speaker 1: for the war effort. So they helped out in World
Speaker 1: War two as well. Um. Then of course, you know,
Speaker 1: they made transparency film in the late forties. Um, they
Speaker 1: began looking at other other companies too. They started making, uh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of weird synthetic vitamin an. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: some parts of Codex history where if you're not really
Speaker 1: familiar with it, if you're only familiar with their cameras,
Speaker 1: you're thinking, what, Yeah, but this to be one of them.
Speaker 1: Like like many large companies, they realized the benefits of
Speaker 1: diversification and that is what I think will save Kodak
Speaker 1: once it manages to make its way out of UH
Speaker 1: Chapter eleven bankrupts. It's just a balance between diversification and
Speaker 1: not going so far outside your core business that you
Speaker 1: are getting involved in something you have really pardon upon
Speaker 1: no business in. Yeah, they eventually would would stop manufacturing
Speaker 1: vitamin a, but they did get into UH you know,
Speaker 1: we like to manufacture vitamin a. See the way it
Speaker 1: works is that you actually syntheticamin Yeah, in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 1: But they did get into UH Television Recording UM along
Speaker 1: with Dumont Laboratories and NBC in uh UM, and then
Speaker 1: they they started getting into safety film for the motion
Speaker 1: picture industry. In eight they got an oscar as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact for that UM, and then Codex earned
Speaker 1: a couple of oscars over for its country Usians. Effect.
Speaker 1: One of the things they were very proud about was
Speaker 1: that up until until fairly recently, every single motion picture
Speaker 1: that has won the Best Picture category was filmed on
Speaker 1: Kodak film. That's impressive. The digital era is starting to
Speaker 1: change that. But you know, during the film era that
Speaker 1: was that was true. Yep, yep. They started uh producing
Speaker 1: the Kodak Colorama display transparencies which were they projected onto
Speaker 1: the main Terminal four at Grand Central Station in New
Speaker 1: York that was eighteen feet high and sixty ft wide.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a lot of megapixels, really confused, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of weight. What's that up there,
Speaker 1: travelers there? Yeah? Um. And then of course in fifty
Speaker 1: one they did the eight millimeter Brownie movie camera and
Speaker 1: movie projector. In fifty two. Um, they had the the
Speaker 1: Kodak Brownie Star Matic in fifty seven. Oh, in fifty four, though,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some people that prefer the look of
Speaker 1: black and white and try X is when they released
Speaker 1: tri X film, which is high speed black and white.
Speaker 1: I've used try X um and it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good film. Um. But yeah, I mean they were still
Speaker 1: they were still doing both black and white and color. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of newspapers were still shooting black and white
Speaker 1: because they couldn't they didn't have color press. And this
Speaker 1: is this is again showing that you know, they'd really
Speaker 1: although they were looking at diversification, their core business was
Speaker 1: still very much in the film world. UM. Most of
Speaker 1: these innovations have to do with either the film process
Speaker 1: itself or the technology of the camera. They did get
Speaker 1: into a polyester textile fiber by Tennessee Eastman, which was
Speaker 1: the wood alcohol company we mentioned before in UM, but
Speaker 1: they started releasing a high speed ectochrome film, the fastest
Speaker 1: color film in the market UM and they had fully
Speaker 1: automatic exposure control in fifty nine on the Codak cameras.
Speaker 1: In sixty one they finally produced a code carousel projector,
Speaker 1: so now you no longer had to front load that slide.
Speaker 1: Actually there were other there were other slides slide projectors
Speaker 1: they introduced before that, but the carousel projector is the
Speaker 1: one that I familiar with. Yeah, that that's the one
Speaker 1: with a big wheel that has all the slides in it. Chunk, chunk, chunk.
Speaker 1: You know. There were many a day in my my
Speaker 1: school days when we were treated to slide shows and
Speaker 1: then the entire class shouting out, it's backwards, you know,
Speaker 1: when the slides in the wrong way and it's upside down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that was the best one, which was the
Speaker 1: upside down and then you have to take it out
Speaker 1: put it back in um. But yeah, that's well, that's
Speaker 1: where I think we get the concept of the slide
Speaker 1: show from this carouseler. Yeah, things like like you know
Speaker 1: in keynote or power point where you're using slides or
Speaker 1: even you know the Google ones. There's lots of different
Speaker 1: presentation ones, but we talk about each one's a slide
Speaker 1: that comes all the way back to these days when
Speaker 1: we use these slide projectors. And of course, by this
Speaker 1: point in the mid nineteen sixties, Kodak is a worldwide name.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody knows who they are, most one of
Speaker 1: the most recognizable corporate names in the world. And you know,
Speaker 1: two they exceeded one billion dollars in revenue. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of money in nineteen sixty's a lot of money. Now,
Speaker 1: if you don't think so, feel free to send Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland one billion dollars. I will be happy to dispose
Speaker 1: of your paltry some Again. You can go to the
Speaker 1: website and pick out more. I'm looking for famous names
Speaker 1: like in nineteen sixty three the in stematic camera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the instematic which was we had one of those stematic Uh.
Speaker 1: That to me is immortalized in the great Wonderful folk
Speaker 1: song by Weird Al Yankovic, the Biggest Ball of Twine
Speaker 1: in Minnesota. Then Bernie ran away with my brand new
Speaker 1: in Stematic. But at least we have our memories. Well,
Speaker 1: they made more than fifty million of them by nine seventies,
Speaker 1: so in in seven years um and then of course, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Code of Chrome to made its debut in
Speaker 1: n you know, the sequel, it's never quite right. Nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six they came out with the Kodak, which was
Speaker 1: a color printer. Again, this is important because this is
Speaker 1: a new line of business for them, that that is starting.
Speaker 1: You know, they had had electronic memory, could do two
Speaker 1: thousand and three thousand prints an hour, So that's important. Ye,
Speaker 1: this printer technology, that's what they're really banking on today. Ye,
Speaker 1: that's what they're switching their focus. And the Space program
Speaker 1: used a used um Kodak film to take a photo
Speaker 1: of the creater Copernicus on the Moon. The Lunar Orbiter
Speaker 1: two used a dual lens camera film processor and readout
Speaker 1: device all Kodak brand YEP. And then over the next
Speaker 1: few years they continued to develop more advances in movie
Speaker 1: film technology and their camera technology, and fabrics and fabric
Speaker 1: codel polyester fibers. I didn't realize that codel. You know,
Speaker 1: you'd think the name would have cluded me in, but
Speaker 1: I never realized that was them. Yeah, well is the
Speaker 1: next really big development? Again? Man, I told you that
Speaker 1: all the time. I know, you start to realize how
Speaker 1: frequently use the same words. Right, So they were also
Speaker 1: doing a Yeah, the duplicator, the act to print one
Speaker 1: copier duplicator was invent But but the other big thing
Speaker 1: in seventy five was the development of the first digital camera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: see this was done again. Kodak has been doing research.
Speaker 1: They realized early on that research and development were important. Um,
Speaker 1: like Bell Labs, like many other companies HP and so Kodak.
Speaker 1: Somebody at Kodak created a digital camera. They actually used
Speaker 1: the sensor that was created at Bell Labs and built
Speaker 1: a digital camera which was a point one megapixel black
Speaker 1: and white camera in n and they promptly told that
Speaker 1: guy to put it away where nobody was gonna see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a while before Kodak would really start
Speaker 1: to get into digital photography and digital products. However, it
Speaker 1: is important to note that they were working on this
Speaker 1: that far back in time and they realized, you may say,
Speaker 1: why didn't they totally get into this and spend them
Speaker 1: They realized what effect this would have on their entrenched businesses.
Speaker 1: They knew that then, so they knew that there needs
Speaker 1: to be some sort of transition between film and digital
Speaker 1: or else they would through through innovation, they would put
Speaker 1: themselves out of business. Yeah, I I make that joke, um,
Speaker 1: but I don't mean to, uh to suggest that they
Speaker 1: would really, you know, hide this away, But they really
Speaker 1: they knew what what an innovation this was, and they
Speaker 1: they had it in the back of their heads. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So nineteen eighty they celebrated their one anniversary, So happy
Speaker 1: one hundred years in nineteen eighty uh. In in unrelated news,
Speaker 1: Star Wars Empire Strikes Back came out. Kodak introduced what
Speaker 1: many of my friends had now, I think this is
Speaker 1: sort of a forerunner of today's point and shoot cameras
Speaker 1: that we actually so was the instematic for that matter,
Speaker 1: but not like the form factor of the disc camera
Speaker 1: which showed up in the eight two, which if you
Speaker 1: didn't if you are unfamiliar with it. UM. Rather than
Speaker 1: having a cartridge with film that scrolls across where the
Speaker 1: shutter is and the viewfinder so that you can, you know,
Speaker 1: take a picture that way, the viewfinders sort of off
Speaker 1: to the side, because there's a it looks like a
Speaker 1: daisy wheel or a flower of of photo negatives so
Speaker 1: that the phone the film is on a disk. You
Speaker 1: dropped the disk into the camera and it rotates to
Speaker 1: to make the exposures. Now, people who were real photographers
Speaker 1: complained about the quality of these photos because they're very tiny. UM. However,
Speaker 1: they were very popular because they were flat and easy
Speaker 1: to carry. And I was also in eighty two when
Speaker 1: UH they had their pavilion open at Epcot. Yes, I've
Speaker 1: been to it. I have as well. UH. In eighty
Speaker 1: three they introduced the Kodak CAR four thousand information system,
Speaker 1: which helped with the storage and retrieval of microfilm images.
Speaker 1: They also were getting into and they had been doing
Speaker 1: this all the way back to helping out with the
Speaker 1: whole X rays thing, really getting into the medical fields,
Speaker 1: helping develop technology specifically for medical UH purposes and not
Speaker 1: necessarily tools like a syringe or something, but more like
Speaker 1: camera and imaging tools specifically for medical procedures and medical tests. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They created the Eastman Pharmaceuticals division in eighty six, just
Speaker 1: to get ahead of myself for a little bit. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of things though, that I wanted to note.
Speaker 1: In eighty four they started producing uh, floppy disks for computers.
Speaker 1: They made video cassettes and eight millimeter beta and VHS
Speaker 1: formats covering their basis. If you guys don't know what
Speaker 1: beta is, ask your parents, or they probably don't know
Speaker 1: either unless they worked in Yeah. Really um. And they
Speaker 1: also came out with the mini lab in eight five.
Speaker 1: I remember this when when people started offering the mini
Speaker 1: labs for fast developing in the corner photoshop, they were
Speaker 1: just tiny Laborador retrievers. In eighty six, also in addition
Speaker 1: to their pharmaceuticals division, they started making batteries, the Ultra
Speaker 1: Life lithium power cells and the super Life batteries. I
Speaker 1: have bought some, um and uh, you know, so this
Speaker 1: is this is important again. They're getting into other kinds
Speaker 1: of of these other categories of businesses, but not completely unrelated.
Speaker 1: I mean they've been in these are all chemical related
Speaker 1: businesses for the most part. Um. I remember the introduction
Speaker 1: of the fling in seven to the one time use cameras, um,
Speaker 1: and then he acquired Sterling Drug in eighty eight, which
Speaker 1: was kind of that was that was one of those
Speaker 1: moves that where seems kind of odd, and they would
Speaker 1: actually end up divesting themselves of much of that business. Uh.
Speaker 1: Anything that didn't have to do with imaging, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that was health related but was still an imaging
Speaker 1: part of the industry they kept. But anything that was
Speaker 1: non imaging health related they divested themselves of. In yeah, um,
Speaker 1: just sort of skipping ahead bits and pieces because we're
Speaker 1: getting kind of late here, um, but really they're they're
Speaker 1: continuing to innovate through this time in printers, uh, copiers
Speaker 1: and the other corsposable camera, disposable cameras, and they they
Speaker 1: created a recycling program to which is kind of ahead
Speaker 1: of its time. So it just makes me think of
Speaker 1: there's an episode of the Office where the receptionist, the
Speaker 1: new receptionist, Aaron, says she loves disposable cameras, but she
Speaker 1: thinks it's such a sad waste because she doesn't understand
Speaker 1: that you take them in to get the pictures developed.
Speaker 1: She takes photos and then throws the camera a So
Speaker 1: for her, it's just the process of taking the photo
Speaker 1: that's joyous, yes, because you don't actually get a photo afterwards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not how those work people, not that not that
Speaker 1: many people use those anymore, like so that I do
Speaker 1: see them at things like weddings where the disposable cameras
Speaker 1: left at the center of the table so you can
Speaker 1: snap photos that will be you know, disposed of after
Speaker 1: the ceremony, right, and everyone's just like, here's another picture
Speaker 1: of Bill with a wedding cake on his nose. Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1: In if you have to have a Nicon F three,
Speaker 1: you might have been in luck because that was when
Speaker 1: they when Kodak came out with the professional digital camera system.
Speaker 1: So if you had an F three, you could use
Speaker 1: uh this system with a with develop by Kodak with
Speaker 1: a one point three megapixel sensor today sounds just like
Speaker 1: which is a fairly small format but probably big enough
Speaker 1: for most news photos, I would imagine, especially at the
Speaker 1: time that was that was pretty on top of things. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: and then they started making a writable CDs UM and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, continuing to to innovate for other uh it's
Speaker 1: it's core lines. UM. They did digitally restore Walt Disney's
Speaker 1: Snow White and seven Dwarfs Dwarves Dwarfs. Yes, no, no v,
Speaker 1: I know it's only Tolkien that does the V I know. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kodak Royal Gold film, which was I remember a popular
Speaker 1: color film, came out in UM and they launched their
Speaker 1: website dot com. Yeah. Back then, websites were the pretty
Speaker 1: new so yah. Kodak was trying to create a presence
Speaker 1: on the web where they could show off all their
Speaker 1: different products and services. And yes, they were there right there,
Speaker 1: you know, not at the very leading edge, but pretty close. Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 1: They came out with the Advanced Photo system where you
Speaker 1: drop in the film cartridge and you could changed the
Speaker 1: film before you shot all the film. They also came
Speaker 1: out with It's Advantas line, which was sort of moderately popular.
Speaker 1: Were supposed to be an advanced photo uh you know
Speaker 1: system yep. Uh. In nine they had another pretty interesting innovation.
Speaker 1: This was with a partnership with Sanyo Electric Company. They
Speaker 1: showed off the very first commercial model of a full
Speaker 1: color organic electroluminescent display or Yeah, so we're just now
Speaker 1: starting to see television sets that have o LED displays
Speaker 1: at a size larger than just a few inches. A
Speaker 1: few years ago, a twelve inch oh LED screen was
Speaker 1: probably the biggest you would see at something like CS.
Speaker 1: But this past ces of I saw oh LED screen, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we go all the way back to to
Speaker 1: see those first shown off. So that's uh, it's been
Speaker 1: a long journey. We're still not and we're still not
Speaker 1: to the point where oh lad technology is cheap enough
Speaker 1: to manufacture that's going to be within the grasp of
Speaker 1: the average consumer, because we're talking about ten thousand dollar
Speaker 1: television sets right now, which I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but it's a little outside my price range. Yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: they were. They also divested themselves of the digital printer,
Speaker 1: copier and roller assembly operations to a company in Germany,
Speaker 1: but they didn't continue to make imaging film for healthcare.
Speaker 1: Um that came out with lines of digital uh photo
Speaker 1: photo outfits in the early two thousands, Yeah, and two
Speaker 1: thousand one that came up with the Kodak Easy Share system,
Speaker 1: which a lot of their their digital cameras have that
Speaker 1: easy share branding on them, and it's all about the
Speaker 1: ability to port digital photos from one thing to another
Speaker 1: as seamlessly as possible. Uh. And these days it would
Speaker 1: mean things like you would, you know, connect your camera
Speaker 1: to your computer and it would just pull things over
Speaker 1: directly into say Facebook, that kind of stuf um. You know.
Speaker 1: And then these products are very popular. I mean they
Speaker 1: ranked highest in customer satisfaction and a couple of price
Speaker 1: segments in the g D Power and Associates survey in
Speaker 1: nineteen or two thousand for them. Sorry, um, so I
Speaker 1: mean they're still they're still making very popular photography products. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know that this this ended up not lasting forever.
Speaker 1: I mean the lists of things that they're working on, um,
Speaker 1: you know are are extensive for this period of time.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, you know that the company is still very
Speaker 1: involved with film. Yeah, and it wasn't until two thousand
Speaker 1: nine that they retired code of Chrome color film that
Speaker 1: which made a lot of people and still makes a
Speaker 1: lot of people very unhappy because nothing quite shoots like
Speaker 1: CODA chrome. Yeah, it made a lot of people unhappy,
Speaker 1: but not enough people for them to keep the product going.
Speaker 1: So this was this was the thing was that Kodak
Speaker 1: was holding onto those film products uh longer than the
Speaker 1: market was actually able to support them. So you have
Speaker 1: this big company that has a storied history in film,
Speaker 1: and there's still plenty of photographers who very much value
Speaker 1: film and films place in art and an industry, but
Speaker 1: there's just there's a diminishing returns. There are fewer and
Speaker 1: fewer of the photographers, and a lot more of them
Speaker 1: are switching over to digital, either because they prefer it
Speaker 1: or because they feel that it's necessary, because that's just
Speaker 1: the way the world is moving. And so the the
Speaker 1: returns for Kodak were decreasing year over year and they
Speaker 1: had to make these tough decisions, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people I've recently anyway that I've read, have suggested that
Speaker 1: perhaps they waited too long, and that's part of why
Speaker 1: they're in the financial position they're in today. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing is Code of Chrome is remember we were
Speaker 1: talking about how it's black and white and the color
Speaker 1: is is produced through the developing process that's a very
Speaker 1: specialized developing process, and it became the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that uh wasn't that, you know, although Kodak made uh,
Speaker 1: photography cheaper and easier for the average Joe or Jane
Speaker 1: to get into. Um code of chrome became something that
Speaker 1: the serious photographer did, and you know it required a
Speaker 1: special developing process, and you know, at a certain point
Speaker 1: that becomes uh, too cost prohibitive for the manufacturer of
Speaker 1: the film and the producing See, they were involved in
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So it was, you know, they're making
Speaker 1: it for a very few people, and so it just
Speaker 1: became too expensive. But I think I think Kodak is
Speaker 1: gonna pop back. They have so much intellectual property. They
Speaker 1: you know, were wise to invest in a diversity of
Speaker 1: products that were sort of related to the core um
Speaker 1: group of products, and I think I think they'll make it.
Speaker 1: They're just gonna need to do some restructuring and invest
Speaker 1: themselves of things that they don't, uh, they don't make
Speaker 1: as much money on. Sadly, that's cameras in this It's
Speaker 1: it's interesting because even though they are getting out of
Speaker 1: the them or a business, they're still going to be
Speaker 1: making money off cameras because they hold this intellectual property,
Speaker 1: these patents that they have licensed off to other companies,
Speaker 1: So they are making money from camera technology. It's just
Speaker 1: they're not they're not making cameras themselves anymore, um, and
Speaker 1: they're still doing other stuff, So we wouldn't call them
Speaker 1: like a you know, when we did our our episode
Speaker 1: about patent trolls and the companies that all they do
Speaker 1: is hold patents and then that's how they make money.
Speaker 1: It's not that Codex going down that route, but they
Speaker 1: are definitely shifting over. So yeah, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: story of Kodak as it as it UH stands today
Speaker 1: today being in February, and UH, it'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see what the future of this company is and whether
Speaker 1: or not they will be able to reinvent themselves in
Speaker 1: such a way to become another industry leader, perhaps in
Speaker 1: a totally different industry. It's kind of funny though that
Speaker 1: one of the UH, the technologies that on which they
Speaker 1: were really on the bleeding edge, ended up massive changing
Speaker 1: the world in which it inhabited. I mean, they really
Speaker 1: created an industry in a lot of ways, and UH
Speaker 1: also created a technology that destroyed that industry, or is
Speaker 1: destroying it or maybe Okay that's too strong, changing it
Speaker 1: so dramatically that it that is causing the company to
Speaker 1: have to completely restructure its corp. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: if they could. I think if they could invent a
Speaker 1: time machine, they'd go back to nine and say, um, guys,
Speaker 1: let's not do this yet, or go back and say,
Speaker 1: let's invent the digital stuff that we're gonna need before
Speaker 1: this film thing takes off, right right, or or let's
Speaker 1: let's really concentrate on digital and do it before anyone
Speaker 1: else and do it better than anyone else. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of There are a lot of wood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the way it works right now. I think
Speaker 1: I think it's it's definitely uh, it's definitely not a
Speaker 1: sad story. It's just kind of a you know, it's
Speaker 1: sad to see them stop making cameras. Yeah, so we'll
Speaker 1: we'll keep your eyes on them and see what happens.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for or topics that we
Speaker 1: should cover, whether it's another company, whether it's a person,
Speaker 1: a specific kind of technology, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: tell us on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled, There is
Speaker 1: text stuff h s W or shoot us an email.
Speaker 1: Our address is tech stuff at Discovery dot com. And
Speaker 1: Chris and I will talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready, Are you