Posted on 10/03/2011 9:26:07 AM PDT by shortstop
My work is done.
Those words were some of the last penned by George Eastman. He included them in his suicide note.
They mark an ignoble end to a noble life, the leave taking of a truly great man.
The same words could now be said for the company he left behind.
My work is done.
For all intents and purposes, the Eastman Kodak Company is through. It has been mismanaged financially, technologically and competitively. For 20 years, its leaders have foolishly spent down the patrimony of a century’s prosperity. One of America’s bedrock brands is about to disappear, the Kodak moment has passed.
It is as wrong as suicide, and, like suicide, is the result of horrifically poor decisions, a fatal wound of self-infliction.
But George Eastman is not how he died, and the Eastman Kodak Company is not how it is being killed. Though the ends be needless and premature, they must not be allowed to overshadow the greatness that came before.
History testifies of the greatness of George Eastman.
It must also bear witness of the greatness of Kodak.
Few companies have done so much good for so many people, or defined and lifted so profoundly the spirit of a nation and perhaps the world. It is impossible to understand the 20th Century without recognizing the role of the Eastman Kodak Company.
Kodak served mankind through entertainment, science, national defense and the stockpiling of family memories.
Kodak took us to the top of Mount Suribachi and to the Sea of Tranquility. It introduced us to the merry old Land of Oz and to stars from Charlie Chaplin to John Wayne, and Elizabeth Taylor to Tom Hanks.
It showed us the shot that killed President Kennedy, and his brother bleeding out on a kitchen floor, and a fallen Martin Luther King Jr. on the hard balcony of a Memphis motel.
When that sailor kissed the nurse, and when the spy planes saw missiles in Cuba, Kodak was the eyes of a nation. From the deck of the Missouri to the grandeur of Monument Valley, Kodak took us there. Virtually every significant image of the 20th Century is a gift to posterity from the Eastman Kodak Company.
In an era of easy digital photography, when we can take a picture of anything at any time, we cannot imagine what life was like before George Eastman brought photography to people. Yes, there were photographers, and for relatively large sums of money they would take stilted pictures in studios and formal settings.
But most people couldn’t afford photographs, and so all they had to remember distant loved ones, or earlier times of their lives, was memory. Children could not know what their parents had looked like as young people, grandparents far away might never learn what their grandchildren looked like.
Eastman Kodak allowed memory to move from the uncertainty of recollection, to the permanence of a photograph.
But it wasn’t just people whose features were savable; it was events, the sacred and precious times that families cherish. The Kodak moment, was humanity’s moment. It was that place in time where there is joy, where life has its ultimate purpose.
From the earliest round Brownie pictures, to the squares of 126 and the rectangles of 35mm, Kodak let the fleeting moments of birthdays and weddings, picnics and parties, be preserved and saved. It allowed for the creation of the most egalitarian art form. Lovers could take one another’s pictures, children were photographed walking out the door on the first day of school, the person releasing the shutter decided what was worth recording, and hundreds of millions of such decisions were made.
And for centuries to come, those long dead will smile and dance and communicate to their unborn progeny. Family history will be not only names on paper, but smiles on faces.
Thanks to Kodak.
The same Kodak that served is in space and on countless battlefields. This company went to war for the United States and played an important part in surveillance and reconnaissance. It also went to the moon and everywhere in between.
All while generating a cash flow that employed countless thousands of salt-of-the-earth people, and which allowed the company’s founder to engage in some of the most generous philanthropy in America’s history. Not just in Kodak’s home city of Rochester, New York, but in Tuskegee and London, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He bankrolled two historically black colleges, fixed the teeth of Europe’s poor, and quietly did good wherever he could.
And Kodak made that possible.
While doing good, Kodak did very well.
And all the Kodakers over all the years are essential parts of that monumental legacy. They prospered a great company, but they – with that company – blessed the world.
That is what we should remember about the Eastman Kodak Company.
Like its founder, we should remember how it lived, not how it died.
My work is done.
Perhaps that is true of Kodak.
If it is, we should be grateful that such a company ever existed. We should rejoice in and show respect for that existence.
History will forget the small men who have scuttled this company.
But history will never forget Kodak.
Eastman, as the article says, gave us great memories, from Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima to simple family albums. I have albums going back to my grandfather, thanks to Eastman.
Good for Eastman and the memories they silver-plated onto photo paper.
And if you’re planning to come back at me with some tirade, I will ignore you.
The truth hurts. There have been many threads on Free Republic about the onerous political correctness at Kodak. Don't believe me? Just follow the link I embeded. In the last couple of decades quite a number of long time employees were fired because of things they said on their own time or not wanting to attend corporate reeducation seminars about politically correct causes (ie. leftist causes and "diversity").
Here's a quote from another Freeper today on another thread about Kodak.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2787160/posts?page=26#26The film and paper products I liked to use are no longer manufactured by Kodak. Companies can't trade on their past reputation forever. Kodak may have given us memories of the past, but they won't be giving us our future memories largely due to their inept management over the last couple of decades that wanted to ignore the effects of digital imaging technologies on its existing product line and actually sold off divisions created by previous management to diversify its products. They drove off talented employees who refused to go along with leftist cultural indoctrination and "diversity" pushed by the HR department. Kodak's demise is sad but self-inflicted.I worked there as a software engineer
The woman in charge was an idiot so I told them I was leaving and gave two weeks notice
The idiot woman told me I couldn’t leave. I insisted for the two weeks that I was going. She honestly thought as the boss she could ORDER me to stay. She came from a government agency (20 and out!)
When I didnt show up the next Monday after my two weeks notice I got about 20 phone calls asking where I was, including several telling me I had to come to a meeting they would organize to explain myself.
I told them I didnt work there any more and I was not planning on coming to their meeting. They CALLED me from the meeting...
Then when they found out this idiot woman didnt know anything about writing software and needed to call me back to finish it about a years later, I found out I was on their ‘black list’ because I left and they could not hire me back. (Remember- THEY called ME to come back, because I was the only one who was able to make it work)
Libtards, all of them
Ektachrome uses the E4 process. It was never possible to process Kodachrome at home. It required very expensive dedicated continuous processing systems, and temperatures had to be controlled to tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. For the last several years up till December 2010, there was just one lab in the entire world set up to process Kodachrome.
Disagree. MANY reliably conservative people worked there. Myself, my uncle.... the only similarity Kodak management might have to liberals, was that they are both criminally incompetant.
Back in 1991 Kodak teamed up with Nikon and made the Digital Camera System 100 for the F3. They made the first digital camera in 1975. Kodak is still the 3rd largest manufacturer. They hold patents that 85% of there competitors use. They did not fail because they ignored digital. MDB Capital Group estimates the digital-imaging patents owned by Kodak may now be worth $3 billion in a sale. Something is missing in this story.
Self-inflicted, indeed. But not for the reasons you gave. I retired from Kodak.
What antiquated thinking. Now that we live under the progressive banner of Obamunism, if you pay enough gelt, you are protected from the vagaries of competition.
I really miss film though. I long to take out my Canon T70 and just shoot some K64. Getting older rots.
I worked in the Eastman Kodak research labs as a research chemist from 1973-1977. It was a great place to work. But, it was already obvious that management had no clue how to deal with the future.
The first digital photography was hitting the scene and Kodak devoted its time to trying to get around Polaroid’s patent for instant film. Losing that patent fight was the beginning of the end.
They tried a medical technology based on their instant film technology, which failed miserably. They poo-poo’d the digital photography and got in too late. They thought that film would always be a ‘mom and dad’ thing, not taking into account what would result from the advent of the personal computer.
After I left, my coworkers said that it wasn’t fun to work there any more. It’s sad, but behemoths like Kodak simply aren’t agile.
What’s weird is that Kodak apparently was doing some pretty cutting edge stuff with digital sensors in the 1980s.
http://www.bobbrooke.com/DigitalStudio/digitalhistory.htm
Thank you!
Google search for Kodak Political Correctness
LOL! This thread appears in the middle of the SERP!
Hopefully, by 2013 there will be an opening in Caracas.
Of course, the position will be strong man
. Zero will have to fake it.
I agree with your sentiments. When I think of Kodak, I think of the huge photo screen they maintained at Grand Central Station in NYC for decades. Always just the most gorgeous photos to look at when you’d get off the train. They could just make your day.
No, I never had or used a disk camera. By that time, I had figured out the smaller the negative, the worse the quality of the photo.
I had a darkroom in my basement starting at about age 11 or 12 (1967-1968). An older lady up the street cleaned out her attic and found some 4X5 glass negatives. They were from around 1910 and showed what looked like 4th of july celebrations (outside in the yard) somewhere probably in Massachusetts. I made contact prints of them and was absolutely blown away at the quality of the prints.
From that day on, I tried to educate myself on what makes a quality print. Later in life when I could afford it, I went into medium format for landscape and "art" type photography. I also still have a Tachahara 4x5 field camera, but really have never had the time to use it much. Film - RIP
I too worked for Sam, as IBM bought a company that I sold for and when they did my stock options at $ 4 were worth $18 so I've got no complaints about IBM.
You are correct, while I had access to all of the senior executives at the company {we were a billion dollars company, not peanuts, but just about 1% of IBM} that IBM bought, access to senior execs at IBM was, because of company size, very limited.
I do miss the thrill of the deal, but retirement has many benefits, like any time is tee time.
No matter, while I was there they cut 10,000 people from Global Services (they could have trimmed a whole lot more, IMHO), and I found out about it a couple of days later from Yahoo Finance. Scared me enough so that I beat feet out the door at the first opportunity.
Wound up at the aforementioned small company. Like it, so far. Good thing is that it's never the same day twice, bad thing is that there's no place to hide. If a system breaks, I need to fix it, period, because there isn't anyone else.
Retirement is still a good ways away. Meanwhile, this is a decent gig. I usually get home in time to have dinner with the family. Pay is OK, but they don't ask me to work too hard, either. As IT jobs go, and with experience in working at some real meatgrinders, I can't complain too much about what I've got.
Who is “MDB Capital”? Why does their opinion matter?
You are so right. My memory is slipping with old age. I used my last Kit and Film in 1981. Thank you for the correction. Brought back a lot of memories of by gone days taking stills and home processing. Both B&W and Slides.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.