Eastman, Kodak, and Roll Film: A history of revolution and evolution in photography

admin | Jan 25, 2010 | Comments View Comments

I love looking at the history of photography. I think it helps keep things in perspective.

Somewhere in the mid-1870s almost everyone had had some sort of exposure to photography. Certainly everyone in modern society had been photographed or, at the very least, had seen photographs. Many had even thought of taking up photography as a craft. There were, of course, limitations. The technical skill and large quantity of equipment needed for the collodion wet-plate process kept early hobbyists at bay, much like the price and technical skill of digital photography did only a handful of years ago.

Revolution and evolution tend to change things.

Enter a man named George Eastman. Sound familiar? Eastman gets most of the credit for popularizing photography. He started out the same as every other photographer back in 1877 using the wet-plate process.

“It seemed,” he said, “that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack-horse load,”

While many people before him had experimented with roll film it was his ingenuity that brought forth the equipment to manufacture film on a mass basis. Result? Eastman’s American Film which was a roll of paper coated with a thin gelatin emulsion that, when stripped from the opaque paper backing, would provide a negative that light could shine through for making prints. Because many photographers had trouble with this method the film was usually sent back to Eastman’s company for processing.

At first there wasn’t much attention paid to this new process aside from rumblings amongst photographers. You still needed expensive and heavy view cameras for taking pictures.

In 1888 Eastman introduced the Kodak camera. It was inexpensive, light, and simple to operate. The Kodak came loaded with 100 exposures and when you used it up you sent it back to Eastman’s company for processing. The developed and printed photographs were returned to the owner along with the original camera loaded with another 100 exposures.

The roll-film Kodak became an international sensation almost overnight.

Hannibal Goodwin soon invented a truly modern foll film (transparent, flexible plastic, sturdy, and without a paper support) and a new photographic era begun.

George Eastman and The Eastman Kodak Company were able to see, very early on, who their main users would be and they directed their advertising accordingly.

“A collection of these pictures may be made to furnish a pictorial history of life as it is lived by the owner, that will grow more valuable every day that passes.”

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