Word: kodak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Clumsily paraphrasing the poet at Polaroid Corp.'s annual meeting last week, Chairman Edwin Land said that "to the rest of the photographic industry, instant photography is a thing apart. To Polaroid, it is the whole of life." By "the rest" of the industry, Land meant Eastman'Kodak, which six days earlier had introduced two instant-picture cameras of its own (TIME, May 3), threatening Polaroid with its first serious competition since Land invented instant photography three decades ago. Though Kodak's entry had long been anticipated, Land viewed it as an illegal incursion on turf that...
...Wall Street, Polaroid's stock rose a few points but Kodak's dipped, a classic case of buying on the rumor and selling on the news. Analysts expect the new instant line to add only a few percentage points to Kodak's profits, which come from chemicals and textiles as well as photography. Many analysts were a shade disappointed in the new cameras. They had expected something dramatically different from the company that developed the first successful color film for amateurs (Kodachrome, in 1935) and has sold 75 million Instamatics since the introduction of that phenomenally successful...
Plywood Brownie. Kodak is not worried that its instant cameras will eat into Instamatic sales. About the size of a tape recorder and weighing 29 oz., the EK6 is seen by analysts as best used for indoor pictures and backyard snapshots. Said one: "It's great, but you can't take it skiing." Nonetheless, a Kodak marketing survey concluded that 24 million U.S. families would be interested in buying an instant camera of the kind that Kodak has now introduced if the price is right (about...
...Kodak has been toying with instant-photography technology for at least 20 years: "plywood Brownie" was the name of a laboratory exposure system for Kodak's instant films. (Polaroid has the same flair for nostalgia; SX 70 was the code designation for the research project that led to its first instant-picture camera in 1947.) But Kodak got cracking only in the 1960s, when Polaroid began rapidly lowering the prices of its instant cameras. Kodak's cameras have been put together since January on a 600-ft. assembly line in Kodak Park in Rochester; the development effort involved...
Whatever the outcome of Kodak v. Polaroid, it will be a contest between friends. Kodak manufactured much of Polaroid's film up until 1974. Forever fearful of antitrust actions, Kodak officials were privately delighted to let Polaroid start the instant business. Polaroid Founder Edwin Land has been grateful to Kodak for other reasons. In the 1930s, when Polaroid was a tiny company making light-polarizing sheets (that eventually evolved into the popular sunglasses), Eastman Kodak was among its first customers. Without that deal, there quite possibly would have been no Polaroid instant camera for Kodak to challenge last week...