In 1888, Eastman Kodak patented roll film and released the Kodak No. 1 box camera. The company’s business model — selling film, then processing and printing the photos taken on that film for their consumers — made photography available to the masses for the first time. Before then, photography was a complicated process requiring knowledge of chemistry and expertise working big, bulky equipment.
Later, when Kodak introduced the Brownie in 1900 and sold it for a dollar, photography went fully mainstream. The company dominated the film sales and development market during the 20th century and successfully marketed its automatic cameras as crucial to capturing fleeting moments — at home and on vacation.
But digital camera sales began to outpace film camera sales in the early 2000s, and Kodak failed to keep up. They filed for bankruptcy in 2012 but do still exist and sell film, albeit to a much smaller market.
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How Kodak invented the “snapshot”
The original Kodak camera changed photography forever.
Coleman Lowndes was a lead producer who has covered history, culture, and photography since joining the Vox video team in 2017.
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