| George Eastman (1854-1932) transformed photography from a cumbersome
professional skill into a hobby for everyone.
Beginning as a visionary entrepreneur, he became one of the
great business leaders of his time. Eastman's success was based in part on his own inventions, but more on his ability to recruit employees with technical skills, to sell his products, outmaneuver his competitors, and to raise capital. His two key innovations were the development of roll film to replace clumsy glass plates and the manufacture of light, hand-held camera to replace bulky cameras requiring tripods. Film found unexpected markets in the newly opened areas of x-rays and motion pictures. The photographic products business was highly competitive, but Eastman was able to win dominance in the United States, Great Britain, and Europe in less than twenty years. In 1898 Eastman refinanced his whole enterprise in London bucking the furious opposition of bankers and brokers, but netting a personal profit of $1 million, that he shared this with company employees. This unprecedented scheme was later institutionalized through wage dividends, stock options, savings and loan institutions, and benefit and pension plans. Making money was fun but putting it to work was more fun. As the new century dawned, Eastman moved from active and intensely applied years to years of relative leisure and travel; from amassing great wealth to distributing it; from building a business and the factories to support it to building institutions to serve people in a more humanistic way--through music, medicine, dentistry technical education, the liberal arts, and racial advancement. Two hitherto struggling institutions, the University of Rochester and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, flourished in response to his gifts as did two historically black colleges: Tuskegee and Hampton. Rochester, which he determined to make "the best city in which to live and work," gained a medical and dental school, a teaching hospital, a school of music and a great concert hall. By the end of his life, Eastman had distributed $100 million to institutions of his choice. By the 1920s, it was said that Eastman had spent more time hunting, fishing, and camping than Teddy Roosevelt and that his goal in life was to take two six-month vacations a year. Eastman's predominant characteristic had been enthusiasm for life and when health problems dampened that enthusiasm, the great industrialist ended his life with a pistol and a note: My work is done Why wait GE" |
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The intensity and the sense of loneliness apparent in this 1880s photo hint at the unknown Eastman behind the dry persona the public glimpsed |
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Eastman's major invention was the hand-held Kodak camera that took film instead of glass plates |
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George Eastman in England, 1897 |
| Early Eastman employees, ca. 1888, taken with the first Kodak camera. |
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Interior of the Eastman Theatre with Eastman School of Music students on stage. |
| GE on a camping trip in 1917 |
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GE and Explorer/photographer Osa Johnson bake cakes in Africa. |
