Kodak began as a partnership between George Eastman and Henry A. Strong to develop a film roll camera. After the release of the Kodak camera, Eastman Kodak was incorporated on May 23, Kodak began to struggle financially in the late s as a result of increasing competition from Fujifilm.
In September , the company emerged from bankruptcy, having shed its large legacy liabilities, restructured, and exited several businesses.
The letter k was a favorite of George Eastman 's; he is quoted as saying, "it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. Eastman said that there were three principal concepts he used in creating the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce, and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else.
According to a ad, the name "was simply invented โ made up from letters of the alphabet to meet our trade-mark requirements. It was short and euphonious and likely to stick in the public mind. Eastman entered a partnership with Henry Strong in and the Eastman Dry Plate Company was founded on January 1, , with Strong as president and Eastman as treasurer. These experiments would culminate in an patent for nitrocellulose film.
In , the Kodak camera was patented by Eastman. It was a box camera with a fixed-focus lens on the front and no viewfinder ; two V shape silhouettes at the top aided in aiming in the direction of the subject. At the top it had a rotating key to advance the film, a pull-string to set the shutter , and a button on the side to release it, exposing the celluloid film. Inside, it had a rotating bar to operate the shutter. When the user pressed the button to take a photograph, an inner rope was tightened and the exposure began.
