Kodak history

Nokia and Eastman Kodak, two of the most iconic global corporations of the late twentieth century, demonstrate the paradox of technological leadership coupled with corporate decline. Each organization pioneered innovations that transformed entire industries-Nokia with mobile telecommunications and Kodak with imaging technologies-yet both ultimately failed to sustain market leadership. This paper investigates the factors that contributed to their collapse by analysing historical timelines, key inventions, competitive dynamics, and managerial decisions. Drawing on theories of disruptive innovation, organizational inertia, and path dependency, the study develops a comparative framework to highlight both similarities and differences in their decline. Findings suggest that both firms exhibited cultural rigidity, misaligned leadership strategies, and reluctance to cannibalize profitable core businesses in the face of disruptive threats. The cases underline the importance of organizational ambidexterity, ecosystem development, and timely selfdisruption. The paper concludes with broader lessons for corporate strategy in high-technology industries and provides an annexure listing ten major corporate failures of the past century.

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Com 12 textos escritos por pesquisadores do Brasil e do exterior, Fotografia moderna no Brasil, 1900-1950: arte, saber e poder, organizado por Helouise Costa e Heloisa Espada, investiga a relação entre a modernidade na fotografia e um país que, na primeira metade do século XX, sonhava com um futuro promissor. A interação da fotografia com as mídias de massa, como o cinema e as revistas ilustradas, seus diálogos com a literatura e outras artes, seu impacto nas ciências humanas e sua participação em projetos de poder político são alguns dos temas abordados. Levando em conta questões de gênero, raça e sexualidade, discute-se a ambiguidade dos conceitos de moderno, modernidade e modernismo, conceitos que remetem a renovação e progresso, mas que, ao mesmo tempo, provocam destruições e violências.

En 2012, la société Kodak se plaçait sous la loi américaine sur la faillite, ne pouvant faire face à ses pertes suite à la disparition progressive de la photographie argentique depuis le tournant des années 2000. On explique fréquemment cet échec industriel par le fait que Kodak, faisant face à une technologie de rupture, fut confronté à un véritable dilemme et ne sut pas négocier le virage vers les technologies de l’imagerie numérique. Notre article pondère cette théorie en la considérant trop réductrice. Ses processus d’innovation bien structurés permirent à Kodak d’étudier les technologies des capteurs CCD et de concevoir la première caméra numérique magnétique dès les années 1970. Si le groupe américain se diversifia trop dans l’industrie chimique, cela ne l’empêcha pas de développer progressivement une R&D dans le numérique, et d’introduire sur le marché des produits soit hybrides argentiques-numériques, soit entièrement numériques.

In 2012, the Kodak company filed for bankruptcy, unable to cope with its losses following the gradual disappearance of analogue photography since the turn of the 2000s. This industrial failure is often explained by the fact that Kodak, facing a disruptive technology, was confronted with a real dilemma and did not know how to negotiate the shift to digital imaging technologies. Our article weighs this theory by considering it too reductive. Its well-structured innovation processes allowed Kodak to study CCD technologies and to create the first magnetic digital camera as early as the 1970s. Although the American group diversified too much in the chemical industry, this did not prevent it from progressively developing an R&D in digital, and from introducing on the market either hybrid analogue-digital products, or entirely digital.

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INTRODUZIONE E RINGRAZIAMENTI……………………………………p.3 CAPITOLO I. Il concetto di Heritage, la sua attuazione, l'analisi dell'industria del fotografico. 1.1 Definizione di Heritage………………………………………………………p.6 1.2 Come si attua la valorizzazione dell'Heritage……………………………...p.8 1.3 Il caso specifico dell'industria del fotografico. Breve panoramica sulla storia della fotografia dagli albori ai giorni nostri…………………………………...p.11 CAPITOLO II. Kodak 2.1 George Eastman……………………………………………………………..p.26 2.2 "Voi premete il pulsante, noi facciamo il resto"…………………………...p

The introduction of three-color Kodachrome in 1935 was possible thanks to the long collaboration between the independent inventors Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky and the managers of the Kodak Research Laboratory at Rochester, New York. This paper considers this long research work initiated in 1917 by examining the technological solutions Mannes and Godowsky progressively followed, in the historical context of the first cinematographic additive processes. Besides the technological context, the paper analyzes the evolution of Mannes and Godowsky position into Kodak research. Working independently at the beginning, the two young men were funded by their families first, then by the Eastman Kodak Company and Kuhn, Loeb & Co, experimenting in their personal laboratory. In a second step, Mannes and Godowsky were finally employed by Kodak in 1931 as consultant researchers and incorporated with the team of the Kodak Research Laboratory at Rochester. In the mid-1930s Mannes and Godowsky were able to develop a two-color cinematographic process, which finally evolved in the three-color Kodachrome process. This innovative process was announced in April 1935, despite the fact that the Kodak researchers did not succeed in finding a correct developing process for exposed films. An immense amount of work was done in the American laboratory to find a correct sequence of chromogenic development in the summer 1935. This long research odyssey ended when the Kodak research team managed to drastically simplify the developing process of exposed Kodachrome rolls in 1938, encouraged by the recent German competition and the Agfa Color Neu process.

Paper published in the Vol. 14 No. 01 "Colour Photography and Film" of Color Culture and Science Journal, April 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23738/CCSJ.140100.

Photography is a form of expression. It uses images to communicate. Previously called heliography, daguerreotype, or calotype, the process of capturing images in a permanent way was assigned the term photography by Sir John F. W. Herschel in 1839 (Newhall 2009, p. 21). The etymology of photography comes from the ancient Greek and it is composed by two words: photos and graphein. Photos literally means "of the light." Graphein means writing. Photography is the writing of the light. Every time we take a photograph, we are "writing" a message and it is important that we know how to 'write' this message to properly communicate. Photography uses a complex system of signs in the same way as written language does. The complexity of this system of communication arises from the way that the used signs can be misinterpreted and create different associations for each viewer/ reader. This is one of the reasons why photography as a visual language has been studied by semiologists (

À la fin des années 1930, Eastman Kodak décida d’augmenter sa capacité de recherche industrielle en ouvrant deux laboratoires de recherche additionnels, en France et au Royaume-Uni. Cet article, issu de ma thèse de doctorat, considère tout d’abord la structure de ces deux laboratoires ainsi que leurs scientifiques, acteurs véritables de la production, transmission et protection des savoirs. L’étude des archives inédites de Kodak Ltd et de Kodak-Pathé montre que les chercheurs conservaient le savoir scientifique produit au sein de rapports de recherche, qui n’étaient transmis en interne qu’à une liste restreinte de responsables. De plus, des documents de l’archive française fournissent les modalités de transmission des savoirs scientifiques contenus dans les rapports entre les trois principaux laboratoires de Kodak. Cet article met en lumière cette circulation très codifiée du savoir de la firme, pour laquelle toute technologie d’avenir représentait un atout potentiellement exploitable.

Memory, imagination and enthusiasts are a few tools left to reconstruct the stories of old photo studios of Tamil Nadu in India. Each photograph, mostly unknowingly, became a great cultural reserve. What remains of the studios now are just crumbling buildings and heavy-hearted owners, full of fascinating experiences nevertheless. The spaces are resonant of their faithful practice and an unraveled history of Indian photography. An understanding of photography in these very spaces throws light on the historical and cultural specificity of the practice. This research will bring together the varying kind of Photographers, everyone attached to their profession in their own ways. These interactions of old and new churns out interesting tales including one about an old belief that getting clicked can reduce the lifespan of a person. This made people allow photographs to be clicked only after a person died, thereby making the deathbed change into a studio space replete with the accessories of the dead. Through many such tales it is evident that these studios were much more than what the remnant photographs reveal. They house not only the smell of old chemicals and flashlight burns vying with dust, but also a morsel of history greatly forgotten. Like a hopeful archaeologist, the film seeks to explore these skeletons of the studios, which are soon to disappear from view, drowned by the split second digital era.

In the first decades of photography, inventors, photochemists and photographers were progressively faced with the necessity of managing photographic raw materials with greater efficiency in the context of film production or innovation. These multiple chemistries had to be purchased, stored, heated, melted, mixed together to become a satisfying photosensitive element with specific characteristics. At the end of the nineteenth century, the quantity and the plurality of raw materials increased in the factories of the main companies producing photographic film on glass plate or celluloid. Ilford, Agfa, Kodak and others had to meet the growing demand of amateur photography. This business of photography required a specific ecosystem to expand: special buildings, skilled technicians, photochemists and managers. But also machinery, procedures, testing laboratory, recipes and raw materials. How did all of this work properly? How did experts and technicians handle ammonia, silver nitrate, baryta coating to transform them into bases, emulsions and other photographic products? To answer these questions, I will use a case study by analysing the unpublished report of Walter Thomas Krohn, the first photochemist in chief at Kodak Limited, about his work and experience in the Harrow works during the 1890s. Krohn describes how his colleagues and himself responded to the daily challenge of photographic film and paper making, and how they used and transformed the necessary chemical components in their production environment. Krohn's narrative shows that the progressive management, processing and transformation of these photographic raw materials are the origin of the materiality of photographic objects. It also explains that the success of the photographic business was interrelated with a better understanding of the chemical behaviour of photographic materials and this led to the development of a new science.

Kunstbibliothek in Berlin marks its 150th year in 2018. It was not easy to comprehend the weight of history accumulated over 150 years, which is an impressive lifespan for an arts and cultural organisation. At the same time, I was curious as to what art libraries do and
how this one had survived for such a long period of time. The Kunstbibliothek is the closely-guarded library that only allows people to inspect their collections after submitting
online applications, but on the other hand it is always packed with visitors there to experience exhibitions and educational programmes. After reading a news article about initiatives to establish museum libraries in Korea I decided to look into Berlin’s art library in more depth. Would it be possible to learn lessons from Europe where some art libraries have already been operating for more than a century? Both excitement and concern rose
inside me. I kept glancing at my watch while waiting for an interview.

This paper discusses, with the help of the notion of 'attachments', how early Kodak advdertisements were advertised for ubiquitous use, with surprisingly similar claims to ads for today's digital camera technologies. While the advertisements in textual form were addressed at a generalised future ‘you’, who could be anyone, becoming attached to the device as he or she pleases, the visualisations used clearly targeted the advertisements at well-off middle- and upper-class white people who ascribe to the promises of modernisation, urbanisation and consumer capitalism.

This applied master’s essay was undertaken to explore the importance of the Unit Still Photographer and their importance in the early days of cinema using the Douglas Fairbanks Nitrate collection within the George Eastman Museum in Rochester New York. This essay focuses on three aspects: The Image and The Studio, each analyzing the work of the unit still photographer as each group views and uses the images. The third focuses on ways to prioritize the accessibility of the collection for researchers studying in this field. The paper will use examples from three of Douglas Fairbanks’s popular films: Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925). This paper views the production stills through the eyes of each of the three groups and bring to light the history and work of the under-appreciated and unknown unit still photographers pre-1928.

« La production et la gestion du savoir photographique : les activités du laboratoire de recherches de Kodak Limited au Royaume–Uni durant l’entre–deux–guerres. » Spring School “Sites of Photographic Knowledge: The Book, the Laboratory, the Territory”, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, Concordia University, Montreal, 12-16 June 2017.

Starting with the first commercial camera and process announcement of 1839, education has been an
uphill battle. These days we still consider the daguerreotype process complex yet, in 1839 and
subsequent years, beleaguered photographers had to be chemists as well as artists to make images. As
photographic technology evolved over time, the learning curve became somewhat easier but not
necessarily ‘easy’ even as dry‐plates started replacing the wet collodion process throughout the 1870s.
Propagation of the art of photography more or less resided with entrepreneurs and skilled studio
assistants who were fortunate to have been mentored by a first generation of professionals and
enthusiasts who invested years to master the craft.

Although we don’t know what the earliest dedicated ‘teaching’ or ‘toy’ cameras are, or when they were
introduced, the 1876 and 1881 Herzog cameras are certainly among the first. In 1876, August Herzog
was granted U.S. patent No. 182,117 (Sept. 12, 1876 – reissued Sept. 20, 1881 as No. 9,878) for an
Improvement in Toy Cameras with an intent to make it easy to inexpensively learn photography.

Winner of the Graduate School Doctoral Thesis Prize, DMU's best doctoral thesis 2016-2017.

"Nicolas Le Guern's thesis “The Contribution of the European Kodak Research Laboratories to Innovation Strategy at Eastman Kodak” provides the first insight into 20th century innovation practices in this most well-known of companies. With unprecedented access to the bureaucratic and scientific papers deposited by Kodak Ltd at the British Library in 2010, Nicolas has rewritten the history of Kodak as we know it, shedding light on the technological and organizational relationships in the European research laboratories in England and France. By doing qualitative analysis of unpublished research reports, and through unprecedented finds of scientists’ personal notebooks, Nicolas uncovered the role of secrecy, the deployment of patenting techniques and early instances of ‘open innovation’ practices to present the most complete picture of Kodak research to date. This outstanding piece of primary research shows the possibilities and scope of the new archival resource at the British Library, and reworks the history of Kodak as an iconic multinational company. It is a thesis with broad interdisciplinary repercussions cutting across Science Studies, Business Studies, Bureaucratics, and Photographic History."
Prof. John Young, Director of the Graduate School, De Montfort University.

The first pdf file attached is an abstract of my PhD thesis in French and English.
For French readers, the second pdf file is a longer abstract of the thesis (10 pages).

Em  uma  época  dominada  pela  fotografia  digital,  questionamos  aqui  como  a tecnologia  analógica  tem  se  contextualizado  nessa  fase  de  mudanças,  além  de  se  atualizar  ao  hibridizar suas características com  as da plataforma digital. Como estudo de  caso, será  utilizado  o  movimento  de  fotografia  em  filme  denominado  Lomografia,  além  da comparação  com  seu  similar  digital,  o  Instagram,  abordando também  questões  como  a  queda da Kodak e a falência da Polaroid.

Disponível em: http://portalintercom.org.br/anais/sudeste2013/resumos/R38-1662-1.pdf

Organizado por: Intercom – Sociedade Brasileira de Estudos Interdisciplinares da Comunicação

A daguerreotype is a photographic image recorded by a fine deposit of metallic mercury on a very thin layer of pure silver laid onto a thicker copper plate. The polished plate is made light-sensitive by exposing the silver surface to fumes of elemental iodine and bromine. It is then exposed to light projected within a camera. A positive image consisting of nothing more than the highlights of the recorded subject materializes after several minutes, once the plate's silver coating is exposed to fumes of heated mercury.