George Eastman

The Eastmans gave up the Waterville farm and moved to Rochester in 1860 because George's father was failing. He died of a brain disorder on April 27, 1862, leaving a widow who took in boarders to keep her youngest child in school. Then Katie, who had had polio since childhood, died in late 1870, and George, 15, left school for good and went to work. He clerked in a bank, took photography lessons from two Rochester men, and by 1879 had built a machine that coated dry plates. Some of what came afterward was repayment. He said that when his mother died he cried all day and could not have stopped to save his life.

In 1881 he and Henry Strong founded the Eastman Dry Plate Company, Strong as president and Eastman as treasurer doing most of the actual running. He patented a roll of flexible film in 1885 and in 1888 sold the camera built to hold it, loaded with enough film for 100 exposures. You shot them, mailed the whole camera to Rochester with ten dollars, and got back prints and a reloaded camera. He wrote the line himself: you press the button, we do the rest. The money was never in cameras. It was in film, sold cheaply to everybody including his competitors, and by 1896 Kodak was the largest supplier of film stock in the world. When Thomas Edison and the other producers formed the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908, Eastman got Kodak named their sole supplier.

He gave away 100 million dollars in his lifetime, often anonymously and under the name Mr. Smith. He built the Eastman School of Music, medical and dental schools at Rochester, free dental clinics for poor children in London and Stockholm, and he was the largest donor of his era to Tuskegee and Hampton. He also held Rochester's color line in place. Kodak hired virtually no Black workers while he lived, and a 1939 New York State commission found the company employing exactly one. His dental dispensary turned Black applicants away and his theater seated Black patrons in the balcony. He refused meetings with the NAACP, including a direct appeal from Walter White in 1929. From 1925 until his death he sent the American Eugenics Society 10,000 dollars a year, raising it to 15,000 in 1932.

His spine failed him in the last two years. He could barely stand, his walk became a shuffle, and he became depressed. On March 14, 1932 he shot himself through the heart in his Rochester house and left a note that read: to my friends, my work is done — why wait? He was 77. The estate went to the University of Rochester. His ashes lie under a Georgia marble monument on the grounds of the plant he built. Kodak outlasted him by 80 years, built the first self-contained digital camera prototype in the mid-1970s, could not turn on it, and filed for Chapter 11 in January 2012. His house on East Avenue is the George Eastman Museum.

George Eastman's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Dry plate coating machine patent
  U.S. patent 226,503, the first thing he sold 1880
• Eastman Dry Plate Company company
  Founded with Henry Strong — incorporated as Eastman Kodak in 1892 1881
• Roll film patent patent
  The thing that made the camera possible 1885
• The Kodak camera invention
  Sold loaded for 100 exposures — Kodak was a word he made up 1888
• Eastman School of Music company
  Endowed at the University of Rochester 1918
• Eastman Theatre building
  Opened September 4, 1922, with a chamber hall named for his mother 1922

• April 27, 1862 aged 7 His father dies of a brain disorder His mother took in boarders to keep him in school.
• 1870 aged ~16 His sister Katie dies and he leaves school at 15 She had contracted polio as a child.
• April 1880 aged 25 Patents a machine for coating dry plates
• 1888 aged ~34 Releases the Kodak camera and the slogan that went with it You press the button, we do the rest.
• 1907 aged ~53 His mother Maria dies He said he cried all day and could not have stopped to save his life.
• 1913 aged ~59 The federal government sues Kodak for antitrust violations Final judgment came in 1921 and forced Kodak to sell off holdings and stop fixing prices.
• 1925 aged ~71 Gives up daily management of Kodak and stays on as chairman
• 1929 aged ~75 Refuses to meet NAACP president Walter White Kodak had almost no Black employees. A 1939 state commission found one.
• March 14, 1932 aged 77 Shoots himself through the heart in Rochester Two years of spinal pain and depression preceded it.

• Thomas Edison 1847–1931
  Inventor and scientist whose research laboratory model and electrical innovations transformed modern life. supplied his film
• Booker T. Washington 1856–1915
  Educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute who advocated for vocational training for African Americans. funded his institute
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. fellow giver on the same scale
• Edwin Land 1909–1991
  Scientist and co-founder of Polaroid who invented instant photography. the next man to do it
• Henry Ford 1863–1947
  Industrialist who revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line and made automobiles affordable. contemporary in mass manufacture