basicfilmfall01: George Eastman

George Eastman is remembered as the inventor of the prototype of the modern camera and the first to make photography commercially available. His inventions, including flexible photographic film, the 1888 Kodak roll-film camera, and the Brownie, drastically eased the process of taking photographs, which was popular at the time yet considered much too complicated and tedious for ordinary users to achieve.

Prior to Eastman’s invention of flexible, paper-based photographic film in 1884, photography included chemical processes involving glass plates, which were heavy, fragile, and difficult to ship. To eliminate the glass plates, Eastman covered paper with photographic emulsion and gelatin, and then removed the paper from developed film to produce a negative. This film was then rolled on spools and into a lightweight roll holder that would fit any camera.

1888 Kodak Film Camera and Roll Film

In 1900, the Brownie dollar box camera became the first mass-marketed camera and one hundred thousand were sold in the first year alone. The range of camera owners now extended to the middle class and to amateurs. Eastman’s invention of roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film.