George Eastman – 1854-1932

In 1880 Eastman founded the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company to manufacture dry photographic plates of his own invention. This improvement over the clumsy wet plate system was followed in 1888 by the introduction of what he called the Kodak—two nonsense syllables Eastman thought mimicked the sound of the camera’s shutter—which was a simple box camera anyone could use. Eastman’s advertising slogan said it all—“You press the button, we do the rest”—and photography for the masses was born.