Kodak Built the First Digital Camera in 1975. Then Digital Photography Won.

1. The dry plate factory (1880–1900)

   George Eastman founded the company in 1880. In January 1881, aged 26, he opened a dry plate factory in Rochester, New York. In 1888 he trademarked the name Kodak, and the Kodak camera arrived, priced at $25 and loaded with enough film for 100 pictures. It was sold with a slogan promising that the customer pressed the button and Kodak did the rest. In 1900 the Brownie followed at just $1, with film at 15 cents a roll. A Rochester newspaper timeline says this created a mass market for photography.

2. The market leader (1970s–1997)

   By the 1970s Kodak accounted for about 85% of camera sales and 90% of film sales in the United States, according to a Columbia Business School case summary, which describes film as Kodak's cash cow. Its global payroll peaked at 145,300 in 1988. In 1996 its sales were $15,968 million and its net earnings $1,288 million. A year later sales fell to $14,538 million and net earnings to just $5 million. At the end of 1997 Kodak employed 97,500 people, 54,800 of them in the United States.

3. The toaster-sized camera (1975)

   Steven Sasson, an electronics engineer in Kodak's research lab, built a camera around a 100-by-100-pixel sensor from Fairchild Semiconductor, with a lens and exposure mechanism from a Kodak XL55 movie camera. It weighed 3.6 kilograms, was about the size of a toaster, and recorded black-and-white images on a cassette tape that held 30 images. In December 1975 he photographed lab technician Joy Marshall. After a few demonstrations, Kodak executives said they did not see a market for it. Sasson told the Associated Press in 2005 that his early presentations were "met with a lot of curiosity, some annoyance." A patent was granted in 1978, but the camera never went into production.

   "It only took 50 milliseconds to capture the image, but it took 23 seconds to record it to the tape." Steven Sasson, in a 2015 New York Times article, as quoted by IEEE Spectrum

4. Kodak sells digital (1991–2004)

   Kodak did not simply ignore digital. In May 1991 it launched the DCS 100, a digital back fitted to a Nikon F3 body, with a 1.3 megapixel sensor and a retail price of $20,000. It was aimed at news reporters and journalists, and 987 units were sold. In 1996 Kodak unveiled its first pocket-sized digital cameras for consumers, and by 2001 it was selling mass-market digital cameras. In 2004 it leapfrogged Sony and Canon to lead US digital camera sales, according to the Associated Press.

5. Where the profit lived (2004–2011)

   The trouble was money. In 2005 the Associated Press reported that falling film sales hurt Kodak because film still produced most of its profits. The Columbia case summary says Kodak struggled to make and sell digital cameras at a profit, and calls its belief that consumers would keep paying for Kodak prints a key strategic error. In 2006 Kodak sold its digital camera manufacturing operations to Flextronics. The record shows a company that built and sold digital cameras, and led the US market in 2004, while struggling to make them profitable.

6. Chapter 11 (2012)

   On 19 January 2012 Kodak and its US subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Kodak said it had arranged a $950 million, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup and had sufficient liquidity to keep operating. Chief executive Antonio Perez said Kodak had closed 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs and cut 47,000 jobs since 2003. Subsidiaries outside the United States were not affected, the Associated Press reported. At the end of 2011 Kodak employed 18,800 people worldwide.

7. The smaller Kodak (2013)

   On 3 September 2013 the reorganization plan took effect and Kodak emerged from Chapter 11. It closed $695 million in term exit financing and took about $406 million in new equity from participating unsecured creditors. Its Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses went to the Kodak Pension Plan, which belonged to its UK subsidiary. "We have emerged as a technology company serving imaging for business markets," Perez said in the announcement. By the end of 2013 Kodak employed about 8,800 people.

   LOCKED FACT Kodak's global payroll peaked at 145,300 in 1988. At the end of 2025 it employed approximately 3,500 people across 27 countries.

What Kodak does today

Kodak is headquartered in Rochester, New York. Its latest annual report describes it as a global manufacturer focused on commercial print and advanced materials and chemicals. It reports three segments: Print, Advanced Materials and Chemicals, and Brand. Its 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 reports consolidated revenue of $1.069 billion, up $26 million, or 2%, from $1,043 million in 2024. Prepress Solutions, whose core business is aluminum digital printing plates, made up 52% of total net revenue. Industrial Film and Chemicals made up another 23%. Kodak also makes motion picture film and licenses its brand to others. It reported approximately 3,500 employees across 27 countries at the end of 2025. The 1996 and 2025 figures above are not like-for-like, because Kodak handed its Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses to the Kodak Pension Plan in 2013.

Sources

• IEEE Spectrum: the first digital camera
• AP via NBC News: Digital camera turns 30, sort of (2005)
• PBS American Experience: George Eastman
• Rochester Business Journal: Kodak timeline (2012)
• Columbia CaseWorks: Leap into the void
• Kodak DCS 100 (Wikipedia)
• Digital Kamera Museum: Kodak Professional DCS
• Kodak Form 10-K, fiscal 1997 (SEC)
• Fox News (AP): Kodak files for Chapter 11
• Kodak press release on emergence, 3 Sept 2013 (SEC)
• Kodak Form 10-K, fiscal 2013 (SEC)
• Kodak Form 10-K, fiscal 2025 (SEC)

Kodak is a trademark of Eastman Kodak Company, used for identification. All image credits.