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EASTMAN, GEORGE
See also: Hill, David Octavius, and Robert Adamson;
Talbot, William Henry Fox; and Victoria, Queen and
Albert, Prince Consort.Further Reading
Ames, Winslow, Prince Albert and Victorian Taste. London:
Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1967.
Arnold, H.J.P., William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photog-
raphy and Man of Science. London: The Anchor Press Ltd.,
1977.
Buckland, Gail, Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography.
Boston: David R. Godine, 1980.
Denvir, Bernard, “The Eastlakes.” The Quarterly Review. 611
(January 1957): 85–97.
Denvir, Bernard, The Early Nineteenth Century: Art, Design and
Society 1789–1852. London: Longman House, 1984.
Ernstrom, Adele, “‘Equally Lenders and Borrowers in Turn’: The
Working and Married Lives of the Eastlakes.” Art History 15:4
(December 1992): 470–485.
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Rise of Photography, 1850–1880: The
Age of Collodion, 3rd. ed. London: Thames and Hudson,
1988.
Johnson, Wendell Stacy, “‘The Bride of Literature:’ Ruskin,
the Eastlakes, and Mid-Victorian Theories of Art.” Victorian
Newsletter 26 (Fall 1964): 23–28.
Klonk, Charlotte, “Mounting Vision: Charles Eastlake and the
National Gallery of London.” The Art Bulletin 82:2 (June
2000), 331–347.
Lochhead, Marion, Elizabeth Rigby: Lady Eastlake. London:
John Murray Ltd., 1961.
Robertson, David Allan, Sir Charles Eastlake and the Victo-
rian Art World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1978.
Steegman, John, Victorian Taste: A Study of the Arts and Archi-
tecture from 1830 to 1870. London: Sidgwick and Jackson
Ltd., 1950.
Wickens, Renate, Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake’s Theory of Photog-
raphy as the Containment of Communications Technology.
Toronto: York University, 1995. Unpublished doctoral dis-
sertation.EASTMAN, GEORGE (1854–1932)
The close of the 19th century was a watershed in George
Eastman’s life (1854–1932): a time when he moved from
active, intensive work in photography, from building
the factories to market his products and amassing great
wealth to a time of relative leisure and the building of in-
stitutions to serve humankind through music, medicine,
dentistry, philanthropy, racial advancement, and educa-
tion both technical and liberal. Spanning this watershed
was the photographic revolution he initiated.
As a 23-year-old bank clerk in Rochester, NY with a
sixth-grade education, Eastman entered hobby photog-
raphy in 1877, purchasing a collodion wet-plate camera
and paraphernalia to record trips. He subscribed to the
British Journal of Photography in 1878 and in the very
fi rst issue, learned about gelatin dry plates. He began
producing dry plates for his own use and in 1880, for
sale through the E. and H. T. Anthony Company in NewYork. He also patented machines to coat the plates,
fi rst in London (July 1879) and then in the USA (April
1880).
The bank clerk gained a business partner on 1 Janu-
ary 1881 when Col. Henry Alvah Strong, a buggy-whip
manufacturer, invested $1,000 in the Eastman Dry
Plate Company. Strong would hold the honorifi c title
of president until his death in 1919 with Eastman be-
ing the treasurer and general manager (comparable to
today’s CEO).
Eastman continued working at the bank until Septem-
ber 1881, tending to his dry plate business from 3 pm
until midnight and weekends. His reputation for superior
plates resulted in a growing business until an emulsion
crisis almost closed the business in 1882. He sped to
London, photographic capital of the world, “standing in
the works” of Mawson & Swan Dry Plate Company for
two weeks to learn the reason for the emulsion failure.
(His supplier had changed gelatin sources and a vital
ingredient—sulfur—was missing.)
Recovering after recalling and replacing the spoiled
plates, Eastman soon realized that professional studio
photographers and serious amateurs comprised a fi nite
market. In order to grow his business, he would have
to target a growing market: everyone. But in the 1880s,
hardly anyone entertained the thought of taking pictures
himself. Eastman would not only have to simplify
photography so that the absolute amateur could take
pictures, but he would have to create the desire to do so
through advertising and marketing. Part of his genius
was combining innovation, simplicity, and quality prod-
ucts with pithy slogans such as “You press the button,
we do the rest.”
From 1881 on, Eastman pursued transparent, fl exible
substitutes for heavy, breakable glass, marketing a pa-
per-backed fi lm and roll fi lm holder in 1884. His inabil-
ity to produce a fi lm without the paper backing led him
to hire an undergraduate chemist, Henry Reichenbach,
to spend all of his time working on this quandary.
Eastman tinkered until he had constructed a simple,
hand-held camera that used the paper-backed fi lm and
that anyone, even the rankest amateur, could operate.
The Eastman Detective camera (1886) was a dismal
failure but the Kodak camera (1888) was a runaway
success.
While anyone could take pictures with Eastman’s
simple Kodak system, developing the paper-backed
fi lm was devilishly diffi cult. So in 1886, he started
a photo-fi nishing business—probably the fi rst in the
world. Factory processing of the fi nished product cir-
cumvented the professional photographer and created
a vast new market undreamed of by Daguerre and other
early photographers.
When the Kodak camera was introduced, it came
loaded with a roll of fi lm with 100 exposures. AfterHannavy_RT72353_C005.indd 463 7/5/2007 11:18:05 AM