Kodak: 130 years of history

From the invention of film stored in rolls to the creation of the first digital camera, Kodak has been one of the most innovative photography companies for more than a century. But it has struggled to remain competitive in the face of cheaper film produced in Japan and, later, digital cameras from China.

By Matthew Sparkes The Telegraph UK 10:14AM GMT 19 Jan 2012

1884 - American inventor George Eastman patents photographic film stored in a roll. Four years later he had perfected the first camera to take advantage of his invention.

1892 - The company which would eventually be called Kodak was founded in Rochester, New York. The meaningless name was chosen because it was impossible to mispronounce and was disimilar to any existing words.

1900 - The Brownie camera was launched with a price of $1, bringing photography to the mass market. The basic cardboard box took square images on 2 ¼ film.

1930 - The Eastman Kodak Company launched on the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, where it would remain for 74 years.

1969 - The film used on the Apollo 11 missions was manufactured by Kodak. Each double-perforated 70mm roll could capture 160 colour pictures or 200 black and white images.

1975 - Kodak was the first company to build a working digital camera. An Eastman Kodak engineer named Steven Sasson created the 3.6kg device that stored images on cassette tape, had a 0.01mp resolution and took 23 seconds to expose each image.

1976 - Kodak had a 90pc market share for photographic film and an 85pc share of camera sales in the US. 1994 - Apple launched one of the first consumer digital cameras, the QuickTake. It was actually designed by Kodak and had been released months before Apple's version in Japan under its own brand name. The camera took photos at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels.

2004 - Kodak stopped selling film cameras in the face of increasingly popular digital alternatives. 2005 - Kodak was the largest seller of digital cameras in the US, with revenue reaching $5.7bn. By 2007 it had fallen to fourth place and by 2010 to seventh.

2009 - Kodak stopped selling 35mm colour film after 74 years of production. 2011 - Over the course of the year Kodak shares fell by more than 80pc as it struggled to maintain market share and was hit with huge pension costs for workers. 2012 - Kodak files for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9024539/Kodak-130-years-of-history.html