Kodak could be heading for bankruptcy, so what is their legacy?
Technology and imaging firm Kodak are facing bankruptcy in the face, and with a company of this status spreading back some 130+ years, we thought it would be a kind gesture to see what they have brought to the world prior to this unfortunate fall from grace for the technology giant.
Kodak Historic Milestones:
[arrowlist]
- 1880 – George Eastman begins commercial production of dry plates for photography in a rented loft of a building in Rochester, N.Y.
- 1888 – The name “Kodak” is born and the Kodak camera is marketed with the slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest.”
- 1889 – The Eastman Company is formed, taking over the assets of the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company.
- 1892 – The company becomes Eastman Kodak Company of New York.
- 1900 – The first Brownie camera is introduced. Selling for $1 and using film that costs 15 cents a roll, it brings hobby photography within financial reach.
- 1929 – The company introduces its first motion picture film.
- 1935 – Kodachrome film is introduced and becomes the first commercially successful amateur color film.
- 1951 – The low-priced Brownie 8mm movie camera is introduced, followed by Brownie movie projector in 1952.
- 1962 – The company’s U.S. consolidated sales exceed $1 billion for the first time. Its work force tops 75,000.
- 1963 – Kodak introduces a line of easy-to-use Instamatic cameras with cartridge-loading film (selling more than 50 million by 1970).
- 1972 – Five pocket-size Instamatic cameras that use smaller cartridges are launched. More than 25 million cameras sell in less than three years.
- 1975 – Kodak invents the world’s first digital camera. The toaster-size prototype captures black-and-white images at a resolution of 10,000 pixels (.01 megapixels).
- 1981 – Company sales surpass the $10 billion revenue mark. The next year, hometown payroll peaks at 60,400.
- 1984 – Kodak enters the video market with the Kodavision Series 2000 8mm video system and introduces Kodak videotape cassettes in 8mm, Beta and VHS formats, along with a line of floppy disks for computers.
- 1988 – Global payroll peaks at 145,300.
- 1992 – Kodak launches a writeable CD that its first customer, MCI, used for producing telephone bills for corporate accounts.
- 2003 – Launch of Kodak Easyshare printer dock 6000, which produces durable, borderless 4-by-6-inch prints.
- 2004 — Kodak begins digital makeover, the same year it gets ejected from the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average. It cuts tens of thousands of jobs as it closes factories and changes businesses.
- 2008 — Kodak begins mining its patent portfolio, which generates nearly $2 billion in fees over three years.
- 2010 — Kodak sues Apple and Research in Motion before the U.S. International Trade Commission, claiming the smartphone makers are infringing its 2001 patent for technology that lets a camera preview low-resolution versions of a moving image while recording still images at higher resolutions. Global employment falls to 18,800.
- July 2011: Kodak begins shopping around its 1,100 digital-imaging patents.
- September 2011: Kodak hires Jones Day, a law firm that lists bankruptcies and restructuring among its stop specialities.
- December 2011 — Judge extends camera patent dispute into 2012.
- Wall Street Journal publishes rumors of potential Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing.
[/arrowlist]
Source: www.kodak.com
Anthony Munns