George Eastman

At 77 years old, George Eastman physical status not available right now. We will update George Eastman's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream.

Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film stock in 1888 by the world's first filmmakers Eadweard Muybridge and Louis Le Prince, and a few years later by their followers Léon Bouly, William Kennedy Dickson, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers, and Georges Méliès. He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and in London Eastman Dental Hospital; contributing to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the construction of several buildings at the second campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Charles River.

In addition, he made major donations to Tuskegee University and Hampton University, historically black universities in the South.

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, 1932, Eastman shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, "To my friends: my work is done.

Why wait?"The George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Eastman is the only person represented by two stars in the Hollywood Walk of Fame recognizing the same achievement, for his invention of roll film.

Early life

Eastman was born in Waterville, New York, as the youngest child of George Washington Eastman and Maria Eastman (née Kilbourn), at the 10-acre (4.0 ha) farm which his parents had bought in 1849. He had two older sisters, Ellen Maria and Katie. He was largely self-educated, although he attended a private school in Rochester after the age of eight. In the early 1840s his father had started a business school, the Eastman Commercial College in Rochester, New York. The city became one of the first "boomtowns" in the United States, based on rapid industrialization. As his father's health started deteriorating, the family gave up the farm and moved to Rochester in 1860. His father died of a brain disorder on April 27, 1862. 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 1870 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.

Personal life

George Eastman never married. He was close to his mother and to his sister and her family. He had a long platonic relationship with Josephine Dickman, a trained singer and the wife of business associate George Dickman, becoming especially close to her after the death of his mother, Maria Eastman, in 1907. He was also an avid traveler and had a passion for playing the piano.

The loss of his mother, Maria, was particularly crushing to George. Almost pathologically concerned with decorum, he found himself, for the first time, unable to control his emotions in the presence of his friends. "When my mother died I cried all day", he explained later. "I could not have stopped to save my life." Due to his mother's reluctance to accept his gifts, George Eastman could never do enough for his mother during her lifetime. He continued to honor her after her death. On September 4, 1922, he opened the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, which included a chamber-music hall, Kilbourn Theater, dedicated to his mother's memory. At the Eastman House he maintained a rose bush, using a cutting from her childhood home.

Source

Career

Eastman invented the first film in roll form in 1884, but he had to start at home to produce it. In 1888, he invented the Kodak camera ("Kodak" being a term Eastman invented), the first camera designed to use roll film he had invented.

The camera was loaded with enough roll film to get 100 exposures. The photographer returned the camera to Kodak in Rochester, along with $10, after all the exposures had been made. The company would process the film, make a print of every exposure, load another roll of film onto the camera, and then mail the camera and the prints to the photographer. The slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest," was quickly adopted by customers. No other company in the world could process or sell the unexposed film at first. He first introduced film stock in 1889, and by 1896, he became the world's largest film stock supplier. In 1892, he formed his business under the name Eastman Kodak. As film stock became more standard, Eastman continued to lead innovation. Since his death, refinements in colored film stock have continued.

In an age of growing trade unions, Eastman attempted to combat the union movement by establishing employee welfare services, which included, in 1910, the establishment of a profit-sharing scheme for all employees. Florence McAnaney was chosen by Eastman to lead the Human resource branch, who was once considered a progressive thinker of the era. She was one of the first women to hold an executive role in a large U.S. corporation.

Source