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the photographer had fi nished the roll, he could send
the whole camera back to Rochester where the fi lm
was developed, prints were made and sent back along
with the reloaded camera. (Daylight-loading fi lm was
invented in 1892.)
Finally in August 1889, Eastman introduced Reichen-
bach’s transparent, fl exible nitrate fi lm. The difference
in fi lm quality was so obvious that fi lm and camera sales
soared again. The 1890s saw the photographic revolution
continue with smaller, more effi cient camera models
culminating in the Brownie camera of 1900, marketed
for $1 and taking a roll of fi lm costing 15 cents.
As the fi rst to market fi lm, and the maker of the
best fi lm in the 1890s, Eastman was poised to take
advantage of the introduction of x-ray photography
(1896) and motion pictures. In 1889, Thomas Edison
purchased 50 feet of double-thick Kodak fi lm for his
Kinetescope, a prototype motion picture machine. When
projectors came into use (ca. 1895), they took miles of
fi lm. Eastman’s company was the only one poised to
meet these needs.
The key to Eastman’s business success initially was
a combination of business and marketing skills and in-
sights, a technological orientation, continuous personal
innovation of products, especially cameras, acquiring all
patents that related to the company’s principal products,
and enforcing those patents through lawsuits. Soon he
added recruiting employees with technical skills, intense
and clever advertising, worldwide distribution of prod-
ucts, the outmaneuvering of competitors, and the raising
of capital. The photographic manufacturing business
was highly competitive but Eastman was able to win
dominance not only in the United States but also in the
United Kingdom and on the continent of Europe.
By 1900, twenty years after going into business, the
company started by a bank clerk and whip manufac-
turer was the largest photographic materials business in
the world. At the same time, Eastman’s own personal
technical activities ceased as he delegated many of the
functions that he had earlier personally performed. He
credited his talented staff with “switching Kodak Park
from the empirical to the scientifi c path.”
In 1898, Eastman refi nanced the company in London,
fi nancial capital of the world, acting as his own broker
against the furious opposition of London bankers and
brokers, emerging with a personal profi t of $1 million.
He shared the profi t with employees on both sides of
the Atlantic—the fi rst Kodak Bonus. This unprecedented
move was later institutionalized as wage dividends
(1912), savings and loan schemes (1921), stock options,
and benefi t and pension plans (1929). His reorganiza-
tion of the Eastman Kodak Company indicated a shift
in interest toward the construction of new facilities and
fi nance.By 1904, Eastman was pursuing techniques of color
photography. The most serious effort began in 1914 with
the introduction of a two-color color technique named
Kodachrome that was good for portraits and still lifes
but not landscapes.
The Bayer Company, a large German chemical com-
pany that employed 800 research scientists in a proto-
typical industrial research laboratory founded in 1891,
infl uenced Eastman to change the focus of Kodak’s
testing laboratory to a research one in 1912.
Because of his burning desire for a better color pro-
cess, Eastman hired the British research chemist C. E.
Kenneth Mees of Wratten & Wainwright to establish
the Kodak Research Laboratory (KRL). He considered
Mees the world’s foremost color authority because
of his experience with color-sensitized plates. Mees
brought with him a large contingent of Britain’s best
photographic scientists.
Before Mees, Kodak had a 30-year tradition of tech-
nical innovation with Eastman himself handling much
of the experimental and developmental work on gelatin
dry plates, photographic printing papers, and the new
system of roll fi lm. He began to control raw materials
through contracts such as that with the General Paper
Company. He then gradually built the capacity to pro-
duce vitally needed materials, for example, raw paper,
gelatin, chemicals, and lenses. In the fi rst decade of the
20th century, he bought twenty major photographic retail
stores in large cities across the U.S. and in Canada.
While Mees’s knowledge of color photography may
have been the main reason that Eastman hired him, he
also told Mees that his job was “the future of photogra-
phy,” giving him unbridled leeway to develop research
along whatever lines it happened to lead. Mees and other
members of Eastman’s carefully selected management
team ensured the future of the company.
The company’s growth was based on innovation,
quality control, expansion and the acquisition of know-
how purchased from outside sources. Eastman often
bought small companies in order to obtain superior
products such as the emulsion-making formulas and
services of William Stuber. But he recognized that he
could not continue this indefi nitely in an era when the
federal government was investigating him for antitrust
violations. Also, the development of new color processes
required knowledge that Eastman and his staff did not
have and color offered an opportunity to solidify Ko-
dak’s leadership position. In addition, Eastman desired
that Kodak rank among the corporate trendsetters of his
time such as Bayer.
While Eastman’s historical importance rests on his
roles as business entrepreneur and visionary industrial-
ist; he was also a zealous patriot. Thus, during World
War I he directed the Kodak Research LaboratoriesEASTMAN, GEORGE
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