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.
Pentode; this can be applied to the USA as well!
Can an ELSIE show be far behind??
Yeah, the 110 cartridge cameras were barely adequate - but the '80s repackaging (remember the Disk film?) was worse. I have an old Kodak Tourist folding camera that's still pristine. Pity the film just isn't there anymore. Now you see those old cameras (which used to be fairly collectible) used as retail sales display "props" in places like Ikea.
Oh...
Beautifully written, ubie!
It would depend on how many pixels are on the scanner imager.
There are so many similarities between Kodak and Xerox. Both have been moved to irrelevancy by technology. I made a copy here the other day on a Japanese copier and realized that I hadn’t made a photocopy this year until that day. My “documents” exit electronically and are rarely printed.
Xerox too is a politically correct structurally bound company with layers of management. I spent 5 years there in the 90s and they couldn’t get outbid there own way with a map and a three day head start.
Then perhaps Kodak will get IT’s own tv mini-series, too!
To do this well requires very high tech equipment such as Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED professional grade film scanners. I would suggest you send your few special slides to pearson imaging.
Yep, I sold computer systems, software, consulting services, leasing and all combinations thereof and worked for 17 different organizations {including two of my own} and most of those companies are not in existence today.
I was always commission driven, never management driven and moved from company to company at my pleasure, not on their schedule.
Times were much different {in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s} and I'm not sure the same choices of opportunity and freedom of movement are available today.
Tak skal du hav!
When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Kodachrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah!
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they’d never match
My sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white
Kodachrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah!
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome (away)
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome (away)
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome
(Leave your boy so far from home)
Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome (away)
Back when I was in the Air Force, I had a Pentax System 10 SLR camera that used the 110 cartridge film. It took great pics. And the camera, drive motor, flash, and all my lenses fit in one field jacket pocket.
I was driving by Concord Airport in New Hampshire and
there were 6 Pan Am twin prop passenger planes on the
tarmac. I was kind of shocked I thought they went out
years ago.
....Or from personal sacrifice. There *aren't* 50 local companies agitating to hire me anymore. I'm free to change jobs any time I want, but I'll likely need to move to do it.
I'm sure that you've seen it. Lots of IT is now commoditized. Making computers work used to be akin to witchcraft, now my toddler is designing video games on some internet side he visits.
The "witchcraft" is still there, but it's a lot more specialized, and it changes much more rapidly. Or, one can take the route that I've taken....embed myself at a company that's too small to deal with the big outsourcers. I'm not under any delusions of irreplacability. I could be gone next week (or, frankly, later today) ... but its less likely to happen than at a big place like IBM, where they whack people 10,000 at a time. At least in the small company, I'm more likely to see it coming.
And, I've got a direct line to the CIO (my office is next to his). Went out for beers with the owner and the CFO last week. That doesn't happen at the big firms. Michael Dell and Sam Palisano rarely took my calls while I worked for them. :-)
Kodak, like John McLame: What have you done lately?
Agree. A lifetime worth of our memories are in Kodachrome, not only slides tucked on the top shelves, but in our mind also. I could never accept Velvia on emotional plane. It felt strange, cold and wrong, because my mind was callibrated to Kodachrome. When finally moved to digital I spent an awful lot of time until I managed to tweak my Nikon digital SLR to make pictures in Kodachrome hues.
It is also worth noting that the whole world watched America in Kodachrome - demise of Kodak is an apt metaphor for what ails America today.
Never worked for NCR, did you? Where they "Never sold" but "allowed customers to buy." Where wearing green got you a scolding as "showing you were insincere." Where, after spending five long weeks in a rat-infested hotel in Dayton while attending Sales School, they cut your commission from 13% gross to 1 1/2% and expected you to be happy with it. Where the sales manager would chase you around the office, beating you on the back to sign a resignation letter. Where 100% of all new MBAs quit the Boston District within six months. Oh, the stories...
Momma, don’t take my Kodachrome away!
What now, momma don’t take my iPad away?
Instead of FDR, Hussein Obama will be glorified as our savior, as we come out of this depression we’re in.
Our dad was a brilliant inventor after WWII and benefited from the wisdom of bootstraps, and hard work to grow his vision of the American dream. I don’t see that same *can do* spirit today. I hope I’m wrong.
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