Kodak: The Empire That Thought It Would Live Forever

It photographed weddings, wars, and every birthday in between. Then the company that invented digital photography buried its own invention — and spent the next three decades protecting a business that was already dying. Eastman Kodak wasn't just a camera company. For most of the twentieth century, it was one of America's most trusted names — the company behind the roll of film in nearly every family's junk drawer, the yellow box on every drugstore counter, the phrase "Kodak moment" itself. At its peak it controlled the vast majority of film and camera sales in the United States and employed well over a hundred thousand people in Rochester, New York alone. In this video, I break down what really killed Kodak — and why the answer isn't "digital photography." Kodak's own engineer built the first digital camera in nineteen seventy-five. The company just couldn't bring itself to let it live. This is the story of an empire that captured everyone else's memories and never developed a picture of its own future. #RiseAndFall #Kodak #BusinessHistory #BrandGraveyard #CorporateCollapse #Photography #DigitalCamera #Bankruptcy