802
Knudsen often made two exposures. One can therefore
fi nd different landscapes with the same sky. Knudsen
retired in 1898 and left his business to a relative.
The University of Bergen possesses the biggest collec-
tion of images, both negatives and positives, after him.
Hanne Holm-Johnsen
KOCH, ROBERT (1843–1910)
Heinrich Hermann Robert Koch was born on December
11, 1843, in Clausthal, a small mining city in the Harz
Mountains of Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen). Robert’s
father, Herrmann Koch, was a mining administrator who
eventually became head of the mine. Robert’s mother,
Mathilde Biewend, was actually her husband’s grand-
niece. Koch died on 27 May 1910 at Baden–Baden, a
victim of a serious heart attack.
From positions as a country doctor, experimenting on
microbes in his spare time, he moved to Berlin and even-
tually went on to become—together with his great French
rival Louis Pasteur—the founder of bacteriology.
His articles about bacteriological methods—includ-
ing culture media, microscopic plate technique, and
specimen staining procedures—held great signifi cance
for the history of photomicrography.
In 1877 Koch published the fi rst photomicrographs
of bacteria ever, producing collotypes of such quality,
they set the standard for decades.
To produce the wet collodion negatives K. used
state-of-the-art equipment such as the fi rst focus free oil-
immersion lenses and the new Abbe condensor, named
after its inventor Ernst Abbe, an optical consultant for
the Carl Zeiss Company in Jena.
For Koch himself photography was of eminent im-
portance for scientifi c practice, especially in the fi eld of
microbiology, because “(t)he photosensitive plate repre-
sents the microscopic image more reliably than the retina
of the eye” (Koch 1877, 408). “The photographic picture
might be more relevant occasionally than the specimen
under the microscope itself” (Koch 1881, 11).
Koch also made extensive use of photography during
his several excursions, mainly to Africa, to study tropical
medicine between 1883 and 1907. As well as serving as
private souvenirs the photographs were made as medical
documents, anthropological illustrations, or visual tools
in “parasitological” research.
Jan Altmann
KODAK
In 1888, reviewing a new camera that had just come on
the market, made by an American company formed just
a few years earlier, The British Journal of Photography
wrote: ‘What, in the name of all that is photographic,
is the Kodak...? Just over twenty years later, Bernard
E. Jones in his Cyclopaedia of Photography, published
in 1911 knew precisely what “Kodak” was: “A trade
name which is so familiar that many suppose it to apply
to all hand cameras...” This rapid transformation from
unknown novelty to household word is one of the most
remarkable episodes not only in the evolution of pho-
tography but in modern business history. The success
of Kodak was down to the vision, industry, commercial
awareness and determination of one man—George
Eastman.
George Eastman (1854–1932) was born in Waterville,
New York. From a modest family background—his
father died when George was eight—he soon learnt the
value of industry and thrift. Aged fourteen, he left school
to work as an errand boy for a local insurance company,
earning three dollars a week. Some idea of his character
can be gleaned from the fact that, even as a teenager,
he kept meticulous account books, noting every item
of income and expenditure. By 1872 he had managed
to save over $1,000. In 1874 he joined the Rochester
Savings Bank as a bookkeeper. Still only twenty, he now
took over all his family’s fi nancial responsibilities.
Despite his work and family commitments, young
George still found time to pursue leisure interests, in
particular, photography. In 1877 his account book re-
veals that he bought a photographic outfi t for $49 and
began to take lessons in wet collodion photography
with a local photographer, George Monroe. He soon
became absorbed in his new hobby, spending all his
free time taking photographs or studying photographic
magazines to improve his technique and knowledge. In
1878, he came across an article in The British Journal
of Photography describing Charles Bennett’s improved
method for making gelatine emulsions by ‘ripening’
them to greatly improve their sensitivity. Eastman
began to experiment with coating his own plates at
home, often working through the night. By the end of
the year, he was getting consistently successful results
and began to consider making plates for sale. In 1879,
frustrated by the tedious and slow process of coating
plates individually by hand, he devised a plate-coating
machine, consisting of a roller and a trough of warmed
emulsion, which he patented in England, America and
several European countries.
In 1880, just three years after he had fi rst taken up
photography, Eastman rented the third fl oor of a build-
ing in Rochester, New York and began the commercial
manufacture of dry plates. He invested all his own sav-
ings in the enterprise but he also got fi nancial backing
from Colonel Henry A. Strong, a well-off whip manu-
facturer, who, with his wife, lodged with the Eastmans.
Strong invested $1,000 and, crucially, gave George the
benefi t of his long business experience. On 1 January,
1881, the Eastman Dry Plate Company was formed,
supplying plates to the leading American photographic