man Kodak Company is focused on the enhance-
ment of info-imaging technologies, which combine
images with information in order to improve both
interpersonal and business communications.
JILLConnerFurther Reading
Coe, Brian.Kodak Cameras: The First Hundred Years.
Hove: Hove Foto, 1988.
Delly, John Gustav.Photography Through the Microscope.
Rochester: Photographic Products Group, Eastman
Kodak Co., c. 1988.
Eastman Kodak Company.A Brief History of the Contribu-
tions of the Eastman Kodak Company to Photographic
Progress. Rochester: Eastman Kodak Co., 1938.
Ford, Colin.The Story of Popular Photography. North
Pomfret, VT: Trafalgar Square Publications, 1989.
Kodak Museum of Photography.The Kodak Museum: A
Permanent Exhibition Illustrating the History of
Photography and Some of Its Applications in Science,
Art and Industry. Wealdstone, Harrow, Middlesex:
Kodak, 1947.
Schmidt, Dana M.Patents at Eastman Kodak. Rochester:
Eastman Kodak Co., c. 1987.
West, Nancy Martha.Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.HAROLD EDGERTON
American
Harold E. Edgerton is credited with inventing ultra
high speed, stroboscopic, and stop-action photo-
graphy. He was the first to photograph the invisible
and the elusive, events that occurred too fast for
the human eye to see, from the stroke of a hum-
mingbird’s wings to the detonation of an atomic
bomb to action that occurs too slowly to notice,
such as the movement of sea urchins. Capturing
some events with exposures as short as a hundred-
millionth of a second, Edgerton patented innova-
tions that greatly advanced the technology of
science, industry, and the arts. As an educator,
engineer, and explorer, Edgerton’s many inven-
tions further developed and aided the diverse fields
of photography, medicine, athletics, journalism,
espionage, moviemaking, underwater exploration,
sonar, and nuclear research. His inventions and
innovations have advanced scientific research and
have greatly enlarged the parameters of photogra-
phy, producing classic images that have become
part of the visual culture.
Edgerton was born in 1903 in Fremont, Ne-
braska. During high school, Edgerton learned pho-
tography basics from an uncle and built a home
darkroom. In 1925, he received a B.S. in electrical
engineering from the University of Nebraska in Lin-
coln. After working both in Nebraska and New York
for power generating companies, Edgerton entered
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
- In his graduate studies there, Edgerton first
used the strobe light to see whirling engine rotors.
He received his M.S. in 1927 and later his doctorate
in electrical engineering from MIT, where he became
a faculty member and was eventually named Institute
Professor, MIT’s highest honor.
By synchronizing strobe flashes with the motion
of the spinning engine rotors, then taking a series of
photos through an open shutter at the rate of many
flashes per second, Edgerton effectively had in-
vented ultra-high-speed flash and stop-action
photography in 1931. In 1932, Edgerton, ever an
entrepreneur, developed and perfected the strobo-
scope for use in both ultra-high-speed and still
photography applications, in partnership with for-
mer student Kenneth J. Germeshausen, an MIT
research affiliate. Later, Herbert E. Grier, another
former MIT student, joined the partnership, which
was formally incorporated as EG&G in 1947. The
team began a long series of experiments document-
ing familiar events and activities that moved at
speeds beyond the ability of the human eye to
perceive with the newly-perfected high-speed pho-
tography using a stroboscope. The stroboscope
was a glass tube filled with exotic gases and excited
with an electric jolt that would freeze the action of
any moving thing onto continuously moving film.
The threesome made their first stroboscope patent
application in 1933, the first of 45 patents applied
for by Edgerton and his team in the next 35 years.
EG&G also developed high-powered strobe lights
EDGERTON, HAROLD