60 Fun Facts About Kodak

Who founded the company that became Kodak?

He went into partnership with Henry Strong in 1880 to found the Eastman Dry Plate Company.

In which New York city is Kodak headquartered?

The company's decline hit the city hard, with lost Kodak GDP cancelling out growth in every other sector from 2007 to 2018.

How did the founder come up with the name Kodak?

He said it should be short, easy to pronounce and unlike any other name; K was his favourite letter.

Which letter did Eastman call a strong, incisive sort of letter?

The Kodak name was trademarked in 1888.

How much did the original 1888 Kodak camera cost, pre-loaded with 100 exposures?

Owners mailed it back to Rochester with $10 to have the film developed and a new roll fitted.

What was Eastman's famous slogan for the first Kodak camera?

Gilbert and Sullivan referenced it in their opera Utopia, Limited.

The Kodak camera of 1888 had no viewfinder; what helped users aim it?

A rotating key advanced the film and a pull-string set the shutter.

What business model did Kodak follow, selling cheap cameras to profit from film?

Eastman recognised that film would return more profit than the cameras that used it.

Whom did Kodak's early Kodak Girl advertising target?

Eastman focused on control of the film market rather than cameras.

In which year was Eastman Kodak incorporated?

The Eastman Dry Plate Company had been founded on 1 January 1881.

What was the initial price of the Brownie camera, launched in 1900?

It introduced the snapshot to the masses and surpassed its marketing goal.

After what was the Brownie camera named?

Frank A. Brownell designed it, and it was initially aimed at children.

In which year were the first Instamatic cameras sold?

They were Kodak's lowest-cost cameras to date and used easy-load 126 cartridges.

Which two easy-load film cartridge formats did Instamatic cameras use?

The X-15F was the last Instamatic sold in the US, staying on sale until 1988.

In which year was the three-colour Kodachrome film launched?

It was invented at Kodak Research Laboratories by musicians Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes.

Which two men, both musicians, invented the commercially viable Kodachrome?

An earlier two-colour Kodachrome had been sold from 1915.

In which year did Kodak announce the end of Kodachrome after 74 years?

Sales had declined dramatically as digital took over.

Which Kansas lab developed the world's last roll of Kodachrome in 2010?

The last roll was shot by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry.

Which singer-songwriter had a 1973 hit titled Kodachrome?

A Utah state park named Kodachrome Basin is the only park named for a brand of film.

Which Kodak engineer built the first self-contained digital camera prototype in 1975?

It weighed 8 pounds, used a 100 by 100 pixel CCD and recorded to cassette tape.

How long did the 1975 Kodak digital prototype take to record each image to cassette tape?

Its sensor captured just 0.01 megapixels.

What RGB sensor arrangement, used in almost every digital camera, did Kodak patent in the 1970s?

Kodak also published important research in dye lasers that decade.

What was established at Building 3 of Kodak Park in 1912?

Kenneth Mees was its first director, focusing on colour photography and radiography.

How did the company's founder die in 1932?

His health had been declining; the note he left is famous for its brevity.

Which musical institution did Kodak's founder establish in his home city?

He also established the Rochester Philharmonic and dental hospitals in Rochester and London.

Which Kodak statistician created a Depression-era unemployment plan and later joined Eisenhower's cabinet?

He also pushed Kodak to offer life insurance and retirement annuities in 1928.

Which future instant-camera pioneer supplied Kodak with polarised lenses from 1934?

Kodak briefly considered buying his patents; he later founded Polaroid.

What did Kodak scientists do for the Manhattan Project after a 1943 meeting with Leslie Groves?

Kodak also made RDX, variable-time fuses and hand grenades for the war effort.

What mysteriously fogged a batch of Kodak X-ray film in 1945?

It had contaminated strawboard packaging made in Vincennes, Indiana, thousands of miles away.

What did the Atomic Energy Commission start giving Kodak in 1951?

The deal bought Kodak's silence after it threatened to sue the government over damaged film.

For which spy plane did the CIA contract Kodak to design cameras and film from 1955?

Kodak also built cameras for the KH-7 Gambit and KH-9 Hexagon surveillance satellites.

Which flammable movie-film base did Kodak's acetate film replace after 1948?

Tennessee Eastman created the working acetate film.

What kind of product was Eastman 910, marketed by Kodak from 1958?

Kodak also diversified into vitamin concentrates and plastics in the 1930s.

What was the annual wage dividend that Kodak paid all employees typically worth?

Employee turnover in the 1950s was only 13% versus 50% for US manufacturers overall.

Which event's official film contract did Fujifilm win over Kodak, gaining a permanent US foothold?

Fuji's US market share rose from 10% in the early 1990s to 17% in 1997.

Kodak's annual revenue peaked at what figure in 1996?

Profits peaked at $2.5 billion in 1999 under CEO George Fisher.

How did the WTO rule in 1998 on the American complaint about Fuji's practices in Japan?

A price war between the two companies had begun in 1997.

Which pharmaceutical firm did Kodak buy in 1988 in a failed diversification?

It was overvalued and soon lost money; its remains were sold in 1994.

Which business, spun off from Kodak in 1994, became a Fortune 500 company in its own right?

It had been known as Tennessee Eastman.

Kodak manufactured which early consumer digital camera for Apple?

Its own EasyShare line later took Kodak to number one in US digital camera sales in 2005.

What was Kodak's rank in US digital camera sales in 2005?

Sales surged 40% to $5.7 billion, but margins were thin and many cameras sold at a loss.

How did Kodak's inkjet printer strategy under Antonio Perez differ from Hewlett-Packard's?

Analysts were sceptical because printouts were being replaced by screens.

In which month and year did Kodak file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?

Citigroup provided a $950 million, 18-month credit facility to keep it operating.

For roughly how much did Kodak sell patents to a group including Apple, Google and Microsoft in bankruptcy?

The buyers operated under the names Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corporation.

What is the Kodak spinoff that took over the film and photo kiosk businesses in a deal with the UK pension plan?

Kodak itself emerged from bankruptcy in September 2013 focused on imaging for business.

What did Kodak announce in July 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Film remains a major part of its business, with new studio agreements signed in 2015 and 2020.

Which two failed cryptocurrency products did the company announce in 2018?

The Kashminer was a Bitcoin-mining computer developed by Spotlite.

Which company makes the PIXPRO digital cameras sold under the Kodak brand?

Kodak licenses its brand widely, including to a 2016 smartphone called the Ektra.

Which annual ceremony has been held since 2001 in the Hollywood theatre once named for Kodak?

Kodak paid $75 million for naming rights, which ended in February 2012; it is now the Dolby Theatre.

For how long was Kodak Tower the tallest building in its home city after its 1914 completion?

The Xerox Square Tower finally surpassed it in the late 1960s.

After Fujifilm stopped in 2013, Kodak became the last major producer of what?

Kodak signed new supply agreements with the major studios in 2015 and 2020.

Which two rivals beat Kodak to market in instant cameras and photocopiers, launched by Kodak only in the mid-1970s?

Both Kodak product lines flopped and were abandoned in the 1990s.

What phrase from the company's ads came to describe a personal event worth recording?

The company brought film photography to a mass market for the first time.

In which year did Kodak launch its Carousel line of slide projectors?

The concept was bought from Italian-American inventor Louis Misuraca; production finally ended in October 2004.

In which year did Kodak stop making slide projectors?

By then digital had taken over; Kodak's EasyShare cameras were America's best-sellers the following year.

The original two-colour Kodachrome of 1915 was developed by which Kodak researcher?

The famous three-colour Kodachrome of 1935 was a completely different product invented by two musicians.

In 1919 George Eastman sold a large block of his own stock to whom, below market value?

It was part of a welfare-capitalism programme that already included profit-sharing for all staff from 1912.

To which company did Kodak license the manufacture of Kodak-branded cameras in 2006?

By the end of 2005 Kodak had stopped making cameras for the Advanced Photo System film format.

Which discontinued slide film did Kodak reformulate and relaunch in 35mm in September 2018?

Rising hobbyist demand prompted the return; 120 and 4x5 versions followed the next year.

Kodak's EasyShare research found which group especially enjoyed digital photos but struggled to move them to a PC?

The answer was a printer dock that let users drop the camera in and print without a computer.