George Eastman July 12, β March 14, was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time.
With interests in improving health, he provided funds for clinics in London and other European cities to serve low-income residents. In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. On March 14, , he shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, "To my friends: my work is done.
Why wait? Eastman is regarded as one of the most influential and well-known residents of Rochester, New York. He had two older sisters, Ellen Maria and Katie. The city became one of the first "boomtowns" in the United States, based on its rapid industrialization. To survive and afford George's schooling, his mother took in boarders. The second daughter, Katie, had contracted polio when young and died in late when George was 15 years old.
The young George left school early and started working to help support the family. As Eastman began to have success with his photography business, he vowed to repay his mother for the hardships she had endured in raising him. While working as a bank clerk in the s, Eastman became interested in photography. After receiving lessons from George Monroe and George Selden , he developed a machine for coating dry plates in In , he received a patent for a film roll, and then focused on creating a camera to use the rolls.
The company would process the film, make a print of each exposure, load another roll of film into the camera, and send the camera and the prints to the photographer. The separation of photo-taking from the difficult process of film development was novel and made photography more accessible to amateurs than ever before, and the camera was immediately popular with the public.
