George Eastman: The Man Who Changed Photography

In this installment of ‘Profiles in History,’ we meet a man who revolutionized photography and benefited society through his philanthropy.
George Eastman: The Man Who Changed Photography
A portrait of George Eastman, in 1890, by Paul Nadar. Public Domain
Dustin Bass
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Born in the small town of Waterville, New York, George Eastman (1854–1932) soon moved with his family to Rochester, where his father, George Washington Eastman, had begun a business school called Eastman’s Commercial College. Along with running the school, the elder Eastman sold fruit trees and flowers to help make ends meet for his wife and three children.

After the family was in Rochester for two years, George Washington Eastman suddenly died. The college closed and the family was left in dire financial straits. His mother, Maria, somehow managed to keep the family together, despite the middle child, Emma Kate, suffering from polio.

Eastman's boyhood home, relocated from Waterville, New York, to the Genesee Country Village and Museum. (<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:DanielPenfield" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">DanielPenfield</a>/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>)
Eastman's boyhood home, relocated from Waterville, New York, to the Genesee Country Village and Museum. DanielPenfield/CC BY-SA 4.0

Eastman, who was 7 at the time of his father’s death, stayed in school for as long as possible before it became necessary for him to get a job. He dropped out of school at 14 and took a position with an insurance firm as a messenger. At 15, he accepted a position with another insurance company, and soon began filing and even writing insurance policies. While his pay and responsibilities increased, tragedy struck the family again. Emma Kate died on Dec. 3, 1870, at the age of 20.

The Eastmans, no strangers to tragedy, pressed on. Eastman continued his work at the insurance company, but also studied accounting at nights while at home. The hope of a better paying job came to fruition in 1874, when he accepted a position as junior clerk for Rochester Savings Bank, which tripled his salary to $15 per week.

Eastman, however, was far from complacent with the recent promotion. He scraped his money together and considered a career in real estate. His plan was to visit Hispaniola in the Caribbean (the island of Haiti and the Dominican Republic), where land speculation was booming. A co-worker suggested he purchase a camera to document the trip. It was a suggestion that not only altered his life, but also changed American history and the history of photography. 

The Kitchen Lab

At this time, cameras were bulky and difficult to travel with. Cameras were rarely seen, except in the hands of professional photographers. Eastman considered the combination of camera, tripod, chemicals, water jug, glass tanks, and heavy plate holder to be “a pack-horse load.” The junior clerk decided against the trip to Hispaniola and became obsessed with photography. Not only did he obsess over how to use his camera, but also how one might make photography more accessible and easier to manage.

His mother’s kitchen became his laboratory, where he experimented with gelatin emulsions. At the time, glass plates covered in this emulsion were used to capture the images. Quite often, after a long night of working with his camera, Eastman awoke on the kitchen floor and then got to work. After three years of experimenting with emulsions, Eastman invented a dry plate formula, as well as a dry plate coating machine. The same year that he received his patent, he opened his own business in the Rochester financial district selling his dry plates.

A deteriorated dry plate portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. (Public Domain)
A deteriorated dry plate portrait of Theodore Roosevelt. Public Domain

Partners, Inventors and a New Name

The following year in 1881, Henry Strong, a local businessman, invested in Eastman’s new company. Together, they formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company. While Eastman was busy experimenting, filing and earning patents, and starting a new business, he was still working at Rochester Savings Bank.

As the Eastman Dry Plate Company was on the right trajectory, when Eastman was passed over for a promotion at the bank, he resigned and focused fully on his business. By 1884 and with the addition of 14 shareholders, the company was renamed Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. Before the decade was up, Eastman and his company experienced major breakthroughs in photography, which resulted in financial success.

The same year the company name changed, in 1884, Eastman hired William H. Walker, who had been manufacturing his own dry plates and had previously invented the Walker’s Pocket Camera. The working partnership would result in the Eastman-Walker Roll Holder, which replaced individual plates with paper film photography for the next century.

The roll film combined with an individual camera resulted in the groundbreaking new invention called the Kodak, a name Eastman had coined himself. He said it didn’t stand for anything. He just liked the letter K and wanted the name to start and end with the specific letter. “The word ‘Kodak’ is the result,” he said. Photography was now accessible to the average person.

Dominating the Industry

A Kodak camera advertisement from The Photographic Herald and Amateur Sportsman, from November 1889. (Public Domain)
A Kodak camera advertisement from The Photographic Herald and Amateur Sportsman, from November 1889. Public Domain

The Kodak slogan became “You press the button, we do the rest.” In fact, it was precisely that. The Kodak camera cost $25 (about $830 today) and came with 100 exposures. When all the exposures were used, for $10, the customer could ship the camera to the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in Rochester, where the company removed the film, printed the exposures, and then placed a new roll of film inside.

Despite the success of the Kodak camera, the paper film did not produce the best results. Eastman knew he had to improve on his product. Again, he hired the right person. He hired the chemist Henry Reichenbach, who created a type of transparent and flexible film. The film could be cut in strips and easily inserted into cameras. Eastman soon obtained a very famous customer: Thomas Edison, with whom he would become close friends.

Although the patent for this new film was successfully contested, the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company continued to grow. By 1892, with the international popularity of the Kodak camera, Eastman renamed the company Eastman Kodak Company. His Kodak company would dominate the photography industry for much of the 20th century.

A Man of Generosity

Eastman undoubtedly remembered his difficult childhood and teenage years. His inquisitiveness and exhaustive work ethic enabled him to become one of the nation’s wealthiest people, not to mention one of its most culturally impactful.

With his wealth, he became a philanthropist, donating tens of millions of dollars to causes, especially to the realm of education. He donated primarily to four schools: the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hampton Institute, and Tuskegee Institute.

A statue of George Eastman at the University of Rochester in New York. (<a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Tomwsulcer" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Tomwsulcer</a>/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">CC0</a>
A statue of George Eastman at the University of Rochester in New York. (Tomwsulcer/CC0

He was also incredibly generous to his employees by creating a “Wage Dividend,” which was a distribution to workers based on the yearly dividend of the company’s stock. In 1899, he also distributed a large sum of his own money among his employees. Twenty years later, he distributed a third of his holdings, worth approximately $10 million, among his employees. He also provided employees with life insurance, disability benefits, and a retirement annuity. He implemented these benefits well before they became common practice.

Over the course of his life, his charitable contributions to education institutions, art institutes, parks, hospitals, and dental clinics topped $100 million.

“If a man has wealth, he has to make a choice, because there is the money heaping up. He can keep it together in a bunch, and then leave it for others to administer after he is dead,” he once said. “Or he can get it into action and have fun, while he is still alive. I prefer getting it into action and adapting it to human needs, and making the plan work.”
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Dustin Bass
Dustin Bass
Author
Dustin Bass is an author and co-host of The Sons of History podcast. He also writes two weekly series for The Epoch Times: Profiles in History and This Week in History.