Kodak Camera (1888): 'You Press the Button, We Do the Rest'

The Kodak camera, introduced by George Eastman of Rochester, New York, in 1888, was the first camera designed for ordinary people with no knowledge of photography. It came loaded with roll film for 100 pictures, and when the film was used up the owner sent the whole camera back to the factory for developing, printing and reloading. Summed up in the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest”, the Kodak turned photography from a skilled craft into an everyday hobby and gave birth to the snapshot.

Background: photography before Kodak

Since the announcement of the daguerreotype in 1839, photography had been the work of professionals and dedicated amateurs. Photographers used heavy cameras on tripods and glass plates that, until the late 1870s, had to be coated with wet chemicals just before use and developed immediately afterwards. Even with the new factory-made “dry plates”, taking a picture required bulky equipment, chemicals and a darkroom.

George Eastman

George Eastman was born on 12 July 1854 in Waterville, New York, and grew up in Rochester. He left school at 14 to support his widowed mother and sisters, and worked as a bank clerk. In 1877 he bought photographic equipment for a planned trip and was struck by how cumbersome it was.

Eastman began making dry plates in his mother’s kitchen and by 1880 had patented a machine for coating them. In 1881 he founded the Eastman Dry Plate Company with the businessman Henry A. Strong. He then sought to replace heavy glass with a flexible film. In 1885, with the camera maker William Hall Walker, he introduced a roll holder that could be fitted to existing cameras, using paper-based film coated with light-sensitive emulsion.

The Kodak camera

Eastman’s next step was a complete camera built around roll film. The Kodak of 1888 was a small, leather-covered wooden box that could be held in the hands. It had a fixed-focus lens, so there was nothing to adjust. The user pulled a string to set the shutter, pressed a button to take a picture and turned a key to advance the film. The pictures were circular, about 2.5 inches (6.4 cm) across.

The camera sold for 25 dollars, a substantial sum at the time, loaded with enough film for 100 exposures. When the roll was finished, the owner mailed the camera to Rochester. For 10 dollars the company developed the film, printed the photographs, reloaded the camera and returned it. Eastman’s patent for the camera was granted on 4 September 1888, and the same day he registered “Kodak” as a trademark.

Eastman invented the name himself, wanting a word that was short, easy to pronounce, unlike any other and began and ended with the letter K.

Snapshots and a new market

Kodak’s advertisements spread the slogan “You press the button, we do the rest” and presented photography as something anyone could do, including women and children. Users began taking casual, unposed pictures of family, friends, holidays and street life, which came to be called snapshots.

In 1889 the company introduced transparent roll film on a flexible nitrocellulose base, developed with the chemist Henry Reichenbach. It replaced the awkward paper film, and it also made motion pictures possible: Thomas Edison’s laboratory used Eastman film for its Kinetoscope, and later film-makers such as the Lumière brothers relied on similar celluloid stock. Daylight-loading film, which could be changed without a darkroom, soon followed, so customers no longer had to send the camera back.

The business was renamed the Eastman Kodak Company in 1892. In 1900 it launched the Brownie, a simple cardboard box camera that sold for one dollar and put photography within reach of almost everyone.

Legacy

The Kodak changed how people recorded their lives. Family albums, holiday pictures and amateur documentary photography all grew from the idea that taking a picture should be as easy as pressing a button. Eastman Kodak became one of the largest companies in the United States and dominated the film market for most of the twentieth century. Eastman himself gave away much of his fortune to education and medicine before his death in 1932.

Timeline

• 1854, 12 July: George Eastman is born in Waterville, New York.
• 1881, January: The Eastman Dry Plate Company is founded in Rochester.
• 1885: The Eastman-Walker roll holder and paper-based roll film are introduced.
• 1888: The Kodak camera goes on sale, loaded with film for 100 pictures.
• 1888, 4 September: Eastman’s camera patent is granted and “Kodak” is registered as a trademark.
• 1889: Transparent nitrocellulose roll film is introduced.
• 1892: The company becomes the Eastman Kodak Company.
• 1900, February: The one-dollar Brownie camera is launched.

Why it matters

The Kodak made photography a mass activity rather than a specialist skill. By separating taking pictures from processing them, Eastman created a new consumer industry and changed how ordinary people remembered and shared their lives.