The Kodak Camera

George Eastman’s Kodak camera released in 1888

“Designed for the general public, who had only to point it in the right direction and release the shutter. When the 100-exposure roll provided with the camera had been exposed, the whole apparatus was returned to Eastman’s factory, where the paper rollfilm was developed and printed, the camera reloaded and returned to the customer; ‘You press the button, we do the rest’ was his slogan”

Kodak’s line of Brownie box cameras, first released in 1900 and priced at one dollar, made photography truly available to the broad public.

Thus began a long era of popular photography made possible by the cheap production of cameras and efficient processing and printing of film.

The next great pivotal moment in the history of amateur photography – and perhaps photography in general – was the emergence of digital photography.

Early digital cameras were available on the consumer market in the early 1990s, but it was not until technical improvements and a drop in prices over the next decade that digital photography had replaced older technologies.

In 2002 more digital cameras were sold than film cameras, and Kodak, a giant in American industry for much of the 20th century, filed for bankruptcy in 2012. The greater accessibility and user-friendliness of the technology across time no doubt has paved the way for an increase in the number of people who are able to take photos.

At the same time we also want to consider how culture has impacted the development of technology. Technology is often developed in order to meet demand, or expectations of demand, and hence the direction of development of cameras tells us something about culture at each point. In this case, that there was demand for camera technology that was easy to use, and easy on the wallet.