On September 4th, 1888, 122 years ago, George Eastman applied for a camera patent. It wasn’t the first camera, but it was the first portable film camera.
George’s interest with cameras had first ignited when he planned to take a camera on vacation to Europe. He ended up canceling the trip, but he became obsessed with photography. It was such a hassle to take a picture with the glass plates and wet chemicals and so he was a banker by day and chemical experimenter at night spending all his time after work scheming up a way to make the camera portable. He started experimenting with taking photos on paper that had been painted with emulsion and later he got the combination right by putting photos on cellulose which allowed him to easily roll the film up for storage and development later
In his patent he refers to it as a “detective camera.” I can only imagine that it’s because a detective would be the type of person who would need a portable camera. The way it worked is you would take 100 pictures and send it to Kodak for processing and they would send you back 100 pictures and a new roll of film.
Even though he had a patent the roll film camera, he chose to focus on creating film. Because he created film for every camera that came out, camera manufacturers became his business partners. Sometimes the greatest innovations aren’t the “big ideas” but in finding a way to apply the big ideas in life. You don’t always need to find new big ideas to innovate, you can enter a space and explore the world that new big ideas open up. George Eastman continued to innovate until he retired and became one of the big philanthropists of the time.
It doesn’t stop there, In my research, I learned that Steven Sasson is credited with the invention of the digital camera in 1975 while working at Kodak. It’s cool to think that the folks who brought the camera and put it in the hands of ordinary people innovated into the digital space!
Learn more about George Eastman on the Kodak site and on Wikipedia.
Lots of people are inspired by inventions, but they rarely get a chance to be inspired by the inventors directly. This is largely because they are out of view, sequestered in a basement finicking with soldering irons and zip ties. Les Paul was a prolific inventor who has inspired nearly everyone indirectly, and a lot of people directly. His inventions have probably had the biggest impact on the sound of popular music over your lifetime.
Les Paul invented the solid body electric guitar, multi-track recording, & tape delay. He died one year ago today.
Here is a wonderful interview by NPR from 1992.
The most important thing we are working on isn’t any particular invention. It is figuring out how to improve invention. What the world needs more than any of our inventions is a better ability to invent. This is what Intellectual Ventures is all about. Last night our founder, Nathan Myhrvold got a chance to explain that in an interview with Charlie Rose.
A panoramic view of the Lab's warehouse, containing our 'pile of junk.'
Thomas Edison is credited with saying,
“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
At Intellectual Ventures, we’re dedicated to being the leaders in the business of invention. Therefore, a big pile of junk is somewhat of a forgone conclusion. In 2006, even as Nathan Myhrvold and Edward Jung were still forging the idea of IV Labs, truckloads started to arrive at our then empty Bellevue, WA location. Since that point, the Lab has worked hard to develop an enormously diverse and capable set of scientific equipment to complement its enormously diverse and capable staff.
Read more…
Inventors in History: The Wright Brothers
A model of a Wright brothers airplane is hanging up here at the Intellectual Ventures Lab and I decided to do some research and figure out what made these two brothers special.
They didn’t just start with flight though, they stumbled into it. They started with a printing press publishing a journal and when bikes started getting popular, they had some tools and so they added bikes to their workshop. Later, because they had the tools for bikes, they could start experiment with gliders. They saw some photos of Otto Lilienthal’s glider and got inspired to get into pushing the frontier of flight forward. Projects that inspire projects is something I’ve noticed at the Intellectual Ventures Lab…. Read more…
On September 4th, 1888, 122 years ago, George Eastman applied for a camera patent. It wasn’t the first camera, but it was the first portable film camera.