You Press the Button, We Do the Rest

Holding the Camera that was to make his fortune, George Eastman is pictured in a Kodak snapshot while abroad ship in 1890. With advertisement below, Eastman launched highly succesful campaigns for his Kodak no.1 and subsequent models. Other manufacturers, climbing on the bandwagon, used the Kodak as a standard of comparison-as in the Hawk-Eye ad at below-toclaim that their models were better.

No single event did more to popularize photography than George Eastman's introduction of the simple box camera in 1888, accompanied by the famous slogan above. Eastman foresaw that, given the proper, easy-to-use equip­ment, millions of ordinary people would "desire personal pictures or memoran­da of their everyday life, objects, places or people that interest them .... "

Eastman's original model, the Kodak No. 1 (shown opened for reloading at below), was a box less than seven inches long and four inches wide. Its one­speed shutter was set at 1/25 second -fast enough that subjects did not have to strain to hold still-and its fixed-focus lens assured that every­thing more than eight feet distant would be reasonably sharp. The pictures were circular, not masked to a rectangular shape, in order to take advantage of the entire image projected by the lens. But what won over ordinary people was simplicity. There was no fumbling around with plates, for the Kodak was the first camera designed to use roll film and it came loaded with enough film to make 100 exposures. Nor did the amateur have to worry about develop­ing and printing. He paid $25 for the loaded camera, including a shoulder strap and leather case. The price also covered the cost of processing the first roll of film; when he had made his 100 exposures he mailed the unopened camera to Eastman's Rochester, New York, plant, where the negatives and prints were made. To receive his cam­era back fully reloaded and ready for use again, the customer mailed along with it an additional $10, a fee that also prepaid the processing costs for the new roll of film.

Two jolly gentlemen, one with Kodak in hand, pose for a snapshot in 1889. Barely a year after its invention the little box camera had become part of American life.