George Eastman was born on July 12, 1854 in the village of Waterville in upstate New York. He was the youngest of three children. One of his siblings was severly handicapped. At the age of five George's father died. Shortly after his death their family had financial problems. George was a high school drop out at the age of 14. He needed to support his family so, he got his first job as a messanger boy at an insurance firm. He was payed $3 a week. He got promoted later on and his pay gor raised to $5 a week. He had other jobs after this one.At the age of 24 George became interested in photography when he was going to take a trip to Santo Domingo. He planned on bringing along equipment to take pictures of his vacation. He didn't end up going on this trip but, fell in love with cameras and wanted to simplify the process of picture taking. With what cameras were like then you had to expose the pictures immediatly, Eastman wanted to make it so that you didn't have to do that.After long nights of working on perfecting the picture process Eastman finally figured it out. He came up with a dry plate formula that could hold large numbers of plates. His business started in 1880. His camera held up to 100 rolls of film and the cost of it was $25. He named it Kodak because it was memorable and short. In 1888 he sold his first roll-film camera.
Comments