George Eastman, 1854-1932, was born near Utica, New York. When he was five years old, the family moved to the city of Rochester, where his father worked to establish Eastman Commercial College. George's father died, the college went bankrupt and the family was in severe financial straits. At age fourteen, he left school to become a messenger boy for an insurance company. A year later, he moved to another company, where he delivered messages, did filing, and wrote policies. At age nineteen, he went to work as a junior clerk at a bank. When he was twenty-four years old, Eastman made plans to visit the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. A friend suggested that he take pictures, so Eastman bought the equipment necessary to do so.

Problems With the Wet Plate Process

In the late 1870s, photographers still relied on the "wet plate process" to take pictures. It was necessary to pitch a small tent, coat glass plates with a photographic emulsion, then expose the plates and process them before they dried. Cameras were huge, and they required a large tripod. The equipment to do everything right was extremely heavy and cumbersome.

He did not take the trip to the Caribbean. But he became so engrossed in the photographic process that he worked on perfecting a dry plate process in his mother's kitchen at night after a full day of work at the bank. It is said that some nights he was so tired that he just lay down and slept in his clothes next to the stove. After three years, he had come up with a successful dry plate process, and had patented a machine to prepare plates in large numbers.

The idea was to sell the plates to other photographers. Business was slow, however, until Eastman decided that the process could make taking pictures easy for the general public.

Eastman began experimenting with the use of materials that were lighter and less breakable than glass. He worked first with emulsions on paper and then on film.

Eastman invented the name "Kodak" and came up with the advertising slogan, "'you press the button, we do the rest." His products were advertised heavily in popular newspapers and magazines

Wage Dividend

Eventually, Eastman's company established a "wage dividend," so that besides a regular wage, each employee received an amount proportional to the yearly dividend on the company's stock. In 1919, Eastman distributed a third of his own holdings of Kodak stock to his employees. The company was one of the first to set up retirement annuities, life insurance for employees, and a disability benefit plan.

Philanthropy

Eastman donated money to the University of Rochester, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Hampton Institute, and the Tuskegee Institute. He established the Eastman School of Music, and set up dental clinics in a number of cities.