Eastman Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While the company is credited with building the first digital camera in 1975, it never realised the potential of the digital revolution. In this gallery, we look at the history of the company in pictures.
1. Eastman Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While the company is credited with building the first digital camera in 1975, it never realised the potential of the digital revolution. In this gallery, we look at the history of the company in pictures.
3. The Kodak Brownie camera was introduced in 1900 and was initially priced at just one dollar in the US. The camera was simple to use and was advertised with the slogan: "You push the button, we do the rest".
4. Circa 1901: An advertisement for the Kodak Box Brownie camera
5. Kodak's British Head Office on Clerkenwell Road, London, is seen in this photo circa 1902
6. A Kodak advertisement circa 1909
7. Photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston stands with with group of children looking at her camera, in a picture titled: 'A Kodak creates a sensation', 1890-1910
8. George Eastman (L), founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, is shown with fellow inventor Thomas Edison in this picture dating from the late 1920s
9. The 8mm film format was introduced by Kodak in 1932. In 1965 they released the Super-8 format, which quickly became hugely popular with amateur film-makers.
10. n 1935, Kodak introduced Kodachrome film. The film film was manufactured for 74 years, finally being discontinued in 2009. So ingrained in the popular culture was Kodachrome that Paul Simon named a song after it, and Kodachrome Basin State Park in Utah was named after it.
11. A Kodak advert circa 1958
12. On February 20, 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. He was photographed in his Friendship 7 Mercury capsule with a point-and-shoot camera loaded with Kodak 35mm film.
13. The assassination of John F Kennedy was captured by Abraham Zapruder using a Bell & Howell camera loaded with 8mm Kodachrome II colour film.
14. Kodak brought out the inexpensive, easy-to-load Instamatic camera in 1963, which became massively popular.
15. The Earth rises on August 23, 1966, as seen from the moon by Lunar Orbiter 1 using a Kodak camera.
16. 20 July 1969: Astronaut Buzz" Aldrin faces the camera as he walks on the Moon during Apollo 11 extra vehicular activity. The plexiglass of his helmet reflects back the scene in front of him, such as the Lunar Module and Astronaut Neil Armstrong, taking his picture. Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera loaded with Kodak film.
17. Models demonstrate Kodak cameras at the 1971 Ideal Home Exhibition in London
18. In 1975 Steven Sasson, a Kodak engineer, produced the first working prototype of a digital camera. It was the size of a toaster, weighed eight pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels, and took 23 seconds to save a black and white image onto a cassette tape...
19. ...The crude 100-line digital images could be displayed on a TV by transferring them from the tape using a VCR-sized microcomputer. A patent was issued for the technology, but Kodak didn't take the digital market seriously until 1991, when it introduced the Kodak DCS-100, which had a 1.3 megapixel sensor and was priced at $13,000.
20. In 1982, Kodak intoduced the Disc film format. It did not catch on and Kodak stopped manufacturing the film in 1999.
21. In 1996, Kodak introduced the DC20, a 0.2 megapixel point and shoot digital camera aimed at the rapidly growing market of home-computer users
22. 1 February 1996: Italian model Carla Bruni takes pictures of the assembled media as she promotes the new Kodak Advanced Photo System near Tower Bridge in London
