Eastman, George (1854–1932)

A promotional picture from about 1890 of a fashionable lady holding one of George Eastman's first Kodak box cameras, the carrying-case hanging at her side. She would have had to return the entire camera to the Rochester factory for the finished film to be processed and replaced.

US entrepreneur and inventor who founded the Eastman Kodak photographic company in 1892. He patented flexible film in 1884, invented the Kodak box camera in 1888, and introduced daylight-loading film in 1892. By 1900 his company was selling a pocket camera for as little as one dollar.

Eastman was born in Waterville, New York, and left school at 14. In 1879 he patented a photographic-emulsion coating machine, and began mass production of dry plates in Rochester, New York. In 1886 he introduced stripping film, in which paper was used only to support the emulsion and was stripped off once the negative had been transferred to glass. The image on the glass then had to be transferred to a gelatine sheet for printing. The first Kodak camera was sold loaded with a roll of the stripping film large enough for 100 exposures. After use, the camera was sent to Rochester, where the film was developed and a new film loaded.

Eastman followed this up 1889 with the first commercially available transparent nitrocellulose (celluloid) roll films; the flammable nitrocellulose was later replaced by nonflammable cellulose acetate. Eastman's roll film replaced his stripping film in the Kodak camera and ushered in the era of press-button photography.