How Kodak Destroyed Itself | The Company That Invented the Digital Camera

In 1975, inside a Kodak laboratory, engineer Steven Sasson built the first digital camera in history. Kodak's executives buried it — terrified it would kill their film business. It was the most expensive mistake in business history. This is the full story: how George Eastman built a $31 billion empire on a simple box camera, how Kodak came to control 90% of America's film market, the day its own engineer handed it the future, the decision that doomed it, and the great rival — Fujifilm — that faced the exact same collapse and survived by doing the opposite. Kodak did not miss the future. It held the future in its hands, and chose the past. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Invention They Buried 0:35 The Rise of George Eastman's Empire 1:18 The Empire at Its Peak 2:04 The First Digital Camera (1975) 2:45 The Fatal Decision 3:39 The World Goes Digital 4:19 Fujifilm: The Rival That Survived 5:10 Bankruptcy — The Fall of Kodak 5:54 The Lesson SOURCES • PetaPixel — "A Brief History of Kodak: The Rise and Fall of a Camera Giant" • Fstoppers — "The Birth of the Digital Camera: From Film to Filmless Revolution" • Harvard Business School — "Kodak and the Digital Revolution" (Gavetti, Henderson & Georgi) • CompaniesHistory.com — Fujifilm Holdings company history 🔔 Subscribe to Empire Files for true stories of the companies that built the modern world — and the mistakes that brought them down. New business documentary every week. #BusinessStories #Kodak #HowMoneyWorks