Why Did Kodak Go Bankrupt? It Built a City for Its 60,000 Employees... and Ended Up Demolishing It.

In 1888, a young Rochester bank clerk who found photography far too complicated put on sale a camera with a made-up name, short and easy to pronounce in any language. It came loaded from the factory with film for a hundred pictures; when you'd used them up, you mailed the whole camera back and got it returned developed and reloaded. Its slogan said it all: “You press the button, we do the rest.” That's how Kodak was born. For almost a century, Kodak was photography. The one-dollar Brownie put a camera in children's hands in 1900. Kodachrome was the color of summer vacations for 74 years. The Instamatic sold more than 50 million units in seven years. The Apollo 11 photos on the Moon were taken on Kodak film. In 1976 it sold nine out of every ten rolls of film in the United States, in 1988 it had 145,000 employees, and in Rochester, its hometown, 60,000 people worked at Kodak Park, a plant with its own streets, railroad and fire department. Even the language belonged to it: “a Kodak moment.” The future didn't catch it by surprise: it built it itself, in its own lab, in 1975 — and put it in a drawer. This is the documentary of the story of Kodak: why the company that invented the first digital camera, worked out in writing in 1981 when digital would arrive and built the first digital SLR in 1991 didn't want to sell what it had; how a margin of close to 70% per roll became the trap that kept it from changing while Fuji and Polaroid wore it down; what happened when it finally jumped, in 2005, as America's best-selling digital camera brand, losing money on every one; how Kodachrome died and Kodak Park emptied out building by building; and how, after the 2012 bankruptcy, its digital patents ended up with Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook — while roll film, of all things, started selling again. 📌 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 1:33 The Kodak moment 2:45 George Eastman and the one-dollar Brownie 4:02 The city of Kodak 5:05 Kodachrome, the Instamatic and the Moon 6:23 Kodak saw the future: four warnings 7:38 The film trap 9:07 Ten years late: EasyShare and the Dow Jones 10:26 The last Kodachrome 11:48 Bankruptcy, the patents and what's left Do you have a shoebox at home full of Kodak photos? What was your first camera — and do you remember picking up a roll of developed film? Tell me in the comments. Subscribe to Lost Industrial Kingdoms to find out how other industrial giants that once seemed unbeatable fell. 📷 Image credits CC BY photographs from Wikimedia Commons (author · licence · page of each work): • · CC BY 2.5 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=1588508 • Artem Svetlov · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=86837611 • Ashley Pomeroy · CC BY 3.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=81503491 https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=14700200 • Dave Jones · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=31165214 • Don DeBold · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=21639915 • Emran Kassim · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=54328896 • Joe Haupt · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=69522934 • Joost J. Bakker · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=15745355 • Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=12381... • Mark A. Lackey · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=18931780 • Markus Winkler · CC BY 4.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=56753489 • Matthew Paul Argall · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=13037... https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=13037... • mjtmail · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=35043907 • Parzeus · CC BY 4.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=16950... • Phillip Pessar · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=90620251 • R. Henrik Nilsson · CC BY 4.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=16238... https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=15827... https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=15993... https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=19408... • Ron Reiring · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=15417... • Sba2 at English Wikipedia · CC BY 2.5 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=7954990 • Silvio Tanaka · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=8255266 • Steve Jurvetson · CC BY 2.0 · https://commons.wikimedia.org/?curid=89544591 Licences: CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ · CC BY 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ · CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ · CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Public domain or CC0 archive: Wikimedia Commons. Stock: Pexels. Logos: editorial use. Music: YouTube Audio Library. #Kodak #BusinessHistory #LostIndustrialKingdoms