0.01 Megapixels in two colors

August 17, 2015 11:54 AM

Kodak’s First Digital Moment

“It only took 50 milliseconds to capture the image, but it took 23 seconds to record it to the tape,” Mr. Sasson said. “I’d pop the cassette tape out, hand it to my assistant and he put it in our playback unit. About 30 seconds later, up popped the 100 pixel by 100 pixel black and white image.”

posted by octothorpe (32 comments total)

But Kodak’s marketing department was not interested in it. Mr. Sasson was told they could sell the camera, but wouldn’t — because it would eat away at the company’s film sales.

You don't get rich selling razors, you get rich selling blades. But then when you come up with an electric razor, you don't say "No, that'll fuck up the blade gravy train," because you're not the only person who's going to invent it.
posted by Etrigan at 12:27 PM on August 17, 2015 [14 favorites]

I bet the engineering that went into its selfie stick was equally impressive.
posted by subliminable at 12:30 PM on August 17, 2015

And the problem with digital technology is that if you try to corner the market on browsers game cartridges searching operating systems razor blades, someone will come along very quickly and take that away from you.
posted by plinth at 12:31 PM on August 17, 2015

Kodak is at death’s door; Fujifilm, its old rival, is thriving. Why?

Both saw change coming. Larry Matteson, a former Kodak executive who now teaches at the University of Rochester's Simon School of Business, recalls writing a report in 1979 detailing, fairly accurately, how different parts of the market would switch from film to digital, starting with government reconnaissance, then professional photography and finally the mass market, all by 2010. He was only a few years out.

posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:32 PM on August 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

Kodak's end was kind of sad, really. They actually made some good consumer digital cameras back in the day. But, too little, too late, I guess.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:40 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

The near-death experience of Kodak did serious damage to the Rochester region's economy. Not just the thousands and thousands of jobs at Kodak itself but at all the smaller companies in the area who were suppliers. Now the University of Rochester, in particular the medical center and its satellites, is the number one area employer. It goes without saying those jobs don't pay as well.
posted by tommasz at 12:40 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I bet the engineering that went into its selfie stick was equally impressive.

Well, if you ask the guy who invented it, it was!

It’s a long process, more than 100 prototypes, trips back and forth to China, lots of obstacles. My design was much more sophisticated than the commodity selfie stick that is in the open market. I create products that people will own and use for 20 years or more, that is my quality standard. Each pin, spring, rod, gear, thread, grip, etc has to meet exacting standards to meet the challenges of extreme users.

Of course, he's far from an impartial judge...
posted by Ian A.T. at 1:22 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Kodak is at death’s door; Fujifilm, its old rival, is thriving. Why?

No kidding. I was really surprised to see a bunch of Fujifilm instant film cameras (in various colors) for sale at a Jo-Ann fabrics, and apparently Instax sales are growing.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:22 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

A big problem with certain businesses believed to be mainstays, is that they* don't necessarily realize which business they are in. There is an argument to be made that Kodak believed itself to be a chemical company first. This can obviously lead to really poor decision making, but it also should be acknowledged when practicing 20-20 hindsight. I've discussed this in graduate school with colleagues/peers of Prof. Matteson, and some point to this phenomenon with Kodak. (Note: I don't study at U of R, but we know some of the same people)

*Meaning the decision-makers, not the boots on the ground.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 1:23 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

I remember playing with the Apple QuickTake 100 back in 1994 at the place where I worked. Just now realized that the first two models were manufactured by Kodak...
posted by monospace at 1:24 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

> Kodak is at death’s door; Fujifilm, its old rival, is thriving. Why?

Fuji diversified, Kodak did not. Or that is to say, Kodak didn't diversify enough - they patented a shit load of stuff and managed to make a shit load of money from those patents. When the patents expired several years ago the roof caved in because they hadn't actually *made* anything substantial from those patents other than money. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

I have a little Fuji x100t sat on my desk next to me, it's a fantastic camera. I also have a Hasselblad that i put around 50 rolls of film through a year - all of it Kodak. Kodak film is still a profitable side of the business, perhaps the only profitable side of the business that remains? Whilst it's still profitable it will continue to exist.
posted by lawrencium at 1:27 PM on August 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

About Kodak as a chemical manufacturer... There's a bit in Ignition! (a fabulous account about the quest for devising the ideal rocket fuel, sadly out of print) where they call up their friends and ask them to make some incredibly dangerous, noxious chemical because it might make a good oxidizer. They get told off in no uncertain terms.

The guy that invented the laser printer had to leave Rochester and go work at Xerox PARC before anyone took him seriously. What is it about change and that city?
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 1:28 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Kodak owned a few post-production facilities in Hollywood, but basically let them crash and burn during the 2000s because they stopped selling enough motion picture film to please the bean counters in Rochester. This even though they had crazy-smart software guys (I'm looking at you, Jess Bowers) just bursting with independent claims waiting to be patented and fully developed. Such a waste.

monospace, I had the good fortune to play with a QuickTake 100 camera when I was 15 when my high school bought one for its newspaper class. I was still young enough to think that full-color digital still cameras as just something that had always existed (albeit at a high price point). Kind of like the kids today with their world wide tumblrs and snaptwits.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:31 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm surprised the executives were put off the first prototype displayed on a TV screen. You'd think the engineer would point out the same data could be sent to a printer with the right interface.
posted by mccarty.tim at 1:36 PM on August 17, 2015

staccato signals of constant information: “A big problem with certain businesses believed to be mainstays, is that they* don't necessarily realize which business they are in.”

“Epic Fail: How Blockbuster Could Have Owned Netflix,” Marc Graser, Variety, 12 November 2013

“But management and vision are two separate things,” said a former high-ranking Blockbuster exec at the time, recalling, “We had the option to buy Netflix for $50 million and we didn’t do it. They were losing money. They came around a few times.”

posted by ob1quixote at 1:43 PM on August 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile Polaroid are at the cutting edge of innovation with their new GoPro and iPhone.
posted by adept256 at 1:55 PM on August 17, 2015

When i first heard of that polaroid phone, i thought it was going to have a built in printer like their "digital polaroid" camera and, well, that would be pretty cool and silly and unique.

But nope, generic junky android chinaphone.
posted by emptythought at 2:14 PM on August 17, 2015

The guy that invented the laser printer had to leave Rochester and go work at Xerox PARC before anyone took him seriously.

At the basic level, laser printing is based on the weird technology Xerox invented for photocopiers though. It's one of the few things in imaging that Kodak can't claim credit for.

You put a static charge on a metal plate, dissipate the charge with light in some areas, add toner which then sticks to the charged areas, press the plate against a sheet of paper and heat it up to melt the toner onto the paper. Bingo.
My design college had an original manual Xerox machine which they kept around for demo purposes. You had to do all those steps one-by-one to end up with a really bad photocopy, but it was memorable.
posted by w0mbat at 2:18 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Polaroid is just a brand name bought by some private equity/tech box-shifter type guys and has nothing to do with the original crazy innovative company.
posted by colie at 2:23 PM on August 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

Polaroid is just a brand name bought by some private equity/tech box-shifter type guys and has nothing to do with the original crazy innovative company.

Meanwhile, the latest owner of the Commodore marque has released an Android phone named the PET; they're only the latest owner of the immortal zombie brand, following in a chain of private equity companies, trademark trolls and miscellaneous carpetbaggers and crapvendors, and the PET phone is the latest piece of Commodore-branded technojunk, following on from generic PCs bundled with an open-source emulator and a price markup and a hard-drive-based MP3 player named (IIRC) the e-VIC-20. Which means that, in a few years' time we can expect a Commodore +4 fitness tracker/smartwatch or a 128D e-cigarette or something.
posted by acb at 3:19 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

If anyone is interested in the book Ignition! mentioned above, a PDF is here. Worth checking out just for the two photos at the beginning and the forward by Issac Asimov.
posted by TedW at 3:21 PM on August 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

I was hoping to see the first image.
posted by DieHipsterDie at 3:45 PM on August 17, 2015 [6 favorites]

The near-death experience of Kodak did serious damage to the Rochester region's economy. Not just the thousands and thousands of jobs at Kodak itself but at all the smaller companies in the area who were suppliers.

Kodak was also great for the region in ways more than just jobs They were a fair employer, who treated coworkers well. My grandfather was a farmer who worked part-time doing carpentry for Kodak. He told stories of how during the Depression, Kodak bought employee mortgages so they wouldn't lose their homes. I have no idea if that's true or apocryphal, but he certainly believed it.

Kodak is also the reason I got a college education. They had a policy that if an employee's child made it to the Merit finals, they'd sponsor a scholarship.

I now work for a company who is similarly ethical, and I always keep Kodak in mind as a cautionary tale. They had no competition but themselves. The market just plain passed them by because they were too busy protecting their old business model.
posted by frumiousb at 4:23 PM on August 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

How Blockbuster Could Have Owned Netflix

So in the management-with-vision parallel universe, we have Sears running the world's biggest online shopping marketplace, streaming Blockbuster video, and Kodak producing the best digital cameras (plus they invented the GoPro, for good measure ). Neat.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 5:07 PM on August 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

Soon after arriving at Kodak, Mr. Sasson was given a seemingly unimportant task — to see whether there was any practical use for a charged coupled device (C.C.D.), which had been invented a few years earlier.

The NYT makes it sound as though, prior to Mr Sasson's arrival on the scene, the CCD was a curiosity, awaiting the arrival of somebody smart enough to figure out what to do with it.

The reality was that it was is invented by Bell Labs in 1969, and by 1970 they had built a working solid-state video camera with it, as its inventors has already foreseen at its inception.
posted by kcds at 5:51 PM on August 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

These were profit seeking, greedy corporations who built empires and great fortunes. We should not mourn their passing. They were soulless things and their demise did not inhibit human progress.
posted by humanfont at 6:35 PM on August 17, 2015

Oh hey! Steve Sasson is my husband's uncle. He's a ridiculously nice and super brilliant, in an unassuming way. I had no idea he invented the digital camera until like the third time I met him. My husband didn't find it important enough to mention or something.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:22 PM on August 17, 2015 [7 favorites]

So in the management-with-vision parallel universe, we have Sears running the world's biggest online shopping marketplace, streaming Blockbuster video, and Kodak producing the best digital cameras (plus they invented the GoPro, for good measure ). Neat.

With Psion owning everything else.
posted by fullerine at 12:09 AM on August 18, 2015 [2 favorites]

The NYT makes it sound as though, prior to Mr Sasson's arrival on the scene, the CCD was a curiosity, awaiting the arrival of somebody smart enough to figure out what to do with it.

At least according to the Wikipedia article on CCD history, Sasoon's camera came along in 1975. The first person to make a camera from a CCD appears to have been Michael F. Tompsett - whose patent was filed in 1972. Interestingly Tompsett's interest seems to have been in night vision cameras - and the first CCD application was therefore to display a moving image. [Journalists: You could probably get a good article out of an interview with Tompsett].

Sassoon's innovation was to use the CCD to capture a still image - a natural step for somebody at Kodak's labs to take.
posted by rongorongo at 12:51 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

These were profit seeking, greedy corporations who built empires and great fortunes. We should not mourn their passing. They were soulless things and their demise did not inhibit human progress.

Sure, they were a business, but they were also a culture. Kodachrome, for example, was a consumer product. But it was also a unique emulsion that happened to produce distinctive-looking, beautiful works of art, that we will never see any more of. I will mourn it’s passing.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:39 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

They have photoshop and instagram filters for that now. Mourn no more.
posted by nevercalm at 5:43 AM on August 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

These were profit seeking, greedy corporations who built empires and great fortunes. We should not mourn their passing. They were soulless things and their demise did not inhibit human progress.

The loss of film as an easily available artistic medium is something to greatly morn. Digital imaging is great but it's not a perfect substitute and we've definitely lost something in the transition. Go watch a clean 35mm print of a movie in a theater and then watch the digital version. Even with 4K digital video, the film version is still far superior. I saw a print of Do the Right Thing last year and the images had so much depth that you felt like you could dive right into the screen.
posted by octothorpe at 6:09 AM on August 18, 2015