User:Nauja 18/Kodak Camera (1888)

Advertisement of the Kodak camera (1888)

Kodak camera was introduced in 1888 on the United States of America. The original model was created by George Eastman. It was a leather-covered box-shaped camera with a circular lens and a button on the side to shoot photos. This camera incorporated a a roll of flexible celluloid for a hundred photographic exposure. It is considered one of the most important cameras of photography history because it contributed on the accessibility to photography of the general public (because of it's design, functioning and price) and, most importantly, to non-professional users.

Characteristics

The Kodak was a camera box built in the shape of a parallelepiped. At the top it had a rotating key, on one side, the button to activate the shutter and, on the front, the camera lens. Inside, it had a rotating bar (this bar was soon replaced by a simpler mechanism due to its manufacturing price) to operate the shutter: when the user pressed the button to take a photograph, an inner rope was tightened and the photographic exposure began. Once the photograph had been taken, the user had to rotate the upper key to change the selected frame within the celluloid tape. The camera did not have a viewfinder, nonetheless, it included two V shape silhouettes at the top to facilitate the framing of the photographic subject. Furthermore, the Kodak was the first camera to make use of the flexible celluloid invented by George Eastman. The materials used during the construction of the camera were: wood (the structure of the box), glass (the lens), leather (the cover or covering of the wood) and metal (for the buttons and internal mechanisms).

The camera included celluloid to take 100 photographs. Once this was sold out, the user had the possibility to send the camera back to the manufacturer Eastman Kodak for a price of $ 10. Afterwards, this was returned to the client with a new celluloid tape together with the negatives of the previous framed photographs.

Publicity & impact

The Kodak of 1888 used a series of advertising slogans that managed to popularize the brand and make it visible by the time the new models of the brand were out. These slogans have become iconic for the Kodak brand, since they made the universalization of photography possible: the Kodak was sold at a price of $ 25 and had a simple and practical system to shoot the photographs, a combination that did not exist on the market until then. In fact, the slogan used on the Kodak billboards quote: "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest". The phrase highlighted the ease that the Kodak camera provided in photography and post-development.

References

  [[Category:Kodak]] [[Category:Kodak cameras]]