What Happened to Kodak? The Company That Invented the Digital Camera and Died of It

In December 1975, a 25-year-old Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson built the first digital camera ever made. It weighed eight pounds, recorded to a cassette tape, and took 23 seconds to save a single black-and-white picture. You've probably heard that Kodak got scared and hid it in a drawer. That's not what happened. Kodak patented it. Kodak built the first megapixel sensor. Kodak commissioned a study in 1981 that predicted almost exactly when digital would replace film. Kodak sold the best-selling digital camera in America. And Kodak collected hundreds of millions of dollars from Samsung and LG for the ideas it invented first. And in January 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy anyway. Eleven weeks later, a photo app with thirteen employees sold for one billion dollars. This is the real story of how the company that sold nine out of every ten rolls of film in America lost everything, and why it wasn't stupidity. CHAPTERS 0:00 The camera in the drawer (that wasn't) 1:35 A bank clerk in Rochester 2:49 He made his own product obsolete 3:49 The one-dollar Brownie 4:34 Seventy years of Kodachrome 6:11 The world's largest photograph 7:44 Steve Sasson's eight-pound box 9:45 The 1981 study that saw it coming 10:55 Why ten years went by 11:50 Fuji and the 1984 Olympics 12:49 Polaroid v. Kodak 13:45 The pharmaceutical detour 14:30 The outsider from Motorola 15:32 The peak at the edge of the cliff 16:16 Number one in digital, then gone 17:12 Building Nine and the last Kodachrome 18:15 The patents nobody talks about 18:53 Chapter 11 and thirteen people 20:06 The 2020 loan 21:07 What actually killed Kodak SOURCES Kodak and George Eastman histories (George Eastman Museum), Steven Sasson (National Inventors Hall of Fame, IEEE Spectrum), Polaroid v. Kodak (The Washington Post, 1990), Kodak removed from the Dow (Rochester Business Journal, 2004), Samsung and LG patent settlements (Kodak SEC filings, 2010), Kodachrome and Dwayne's Photo (NPR, 2010), the 2020 federal loan (CNBC, The Washington Post). IMAGE CREDITS Archive stills are public domain, CC0 or CC BY / CC BY-SA, credited to their authors. #AmericanObsolete #Kodak #TechHistory