Page 8 - Pharmacy History 29 Nov 2006

Kodak – the name from thin air
By Geoff Miller
Only a generation of pharmacists ago the name ‘Kodak’ and its trademark colours of yellow and red adorned the fascias of pharmacies across this nation and many others as well.
Today we have Amcal Chemists, Guardian Chemists, Compounding Chemists and so on, but in the not-so-distant past, it was simply the ‘Kodak Chemist’
But what was the story behind the name?
The word ‘Kodak’ was first registered as a trademark in 1888. There has been some fanciful speculation, from time to time, on how the name was originated. But the plain truth is that the company’s founder, George Eastman, invented it out of thin air.
He explained: “I devised the name myself. The letter ‘K’ had been a favourite with me –– it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter.
It became a question of trying out
a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with ‘K’. The word ‘Kodak’ is the result.’ Kodak’s distinctive yellow trade dress, which Eastman also selected, is widely known throughout the world and is one of the company’s more valued assets.1
George Eastman was born on
July 12, 1854 in upstate New York. When George was five years old, his father sold his nursery business and moved the family to Rochester. There the elder Eastman devoted his energy to establishing Eastman Commercial College. Then tragedy struck. George’s father died, the college failed and the family became financially distressed.
George continued school until he was 14. Then, forced by family circumstances, he had to find employment.
His first job, as a messenger boy with an insurance firm, paid US$3 a week. A year later, he became office boy for another insurance firm. Through his own initiative, he soon took charge of policy filing and even wrote policies. His pay increased to US
$5 per week.
George Eastman
for a vacation to Santo Domingo and a co-worker suggested he make a record of the trip. Eastman bought a photographic outfit with all the paraphernalia of the wet-plate days.
The camera was as big as a microwave oven and needed a heavy tripod. And he carried a tent so that he could spread photographic emulsion on glass plates before exposing them, and develop the exposed plates before they dried out. There were chemicals, glass tanks, a heavy plate holder, and a jug of water. The complete outfit ‘was a pack-horse load’, as he described it. Learning how to use it to take pictures cost US$5.
Eastman did not make the Santo Domingo trip. But he did become completely absorbed in photography and sought to simplify the complicated process.
He read in British magazines that photographers were making their own gelatine emulsions. Plates coated with
this emulsion remained sensitive after they were dry and could be exposed at leisure. Using a formula taken from one of these British journals, Eastman began making gelatine emulsions.
He worked at the bank during the day and experimented at home in his mother’s kitchen at night. His mother said that some nights Eastman was
so tired he couldn’t undress, but slept on a blanket on the floor beside the kitchen stove.
After three years of photographic experiments, Eastman had a formula that worked. By 1880, he had not only invented a dry plate formula, but had patented a machine for preparing large numbers of the plates. He quickly recognized the possibilities
of making dry plates for sale to other photographers.
In April 1880, Eastman leased the third floor of a building in Rochester and began the manufacture of dry plates for sale. His initial success impressed businessman Henry Strong and he invested some money in the infant concern.
As his young company grew, it faced total collapse at least once when dry plates in the hands of dealers went bad. Eastman recalled them and replaced them with a good product. “Making good on those plates took our last dollar,” he said. “But what we had left was more important – reputation.”
“The idea gradually dawned on me,” he later said, “that what we were doing was not merely making dry plates,
but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair.” Or
as be described it more succinctly “to make the camera as convenient as
When Eastman was 24 he made plans
8 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 3 ■ no 25 ■ March 2005