Kodak "Brownie"
An object that helped “usher in the beginning of a previous century”, the Kodak Brownie camera made its debut in 1900 at the price of one dollar. In the first year, over 100,000 were sold and was the camera that put photography available to amateurs and the middle class. The name “Brownie” came partly from a children’s book of cartoons that was popular at the time of the same name and partly because it was originally manufactured for Eastman Kodak by Frank Brownell of Rochester, New York.
The Kodak Brownie was dependent on the invention of celluloid, an artificial substance invented by John Wesley Hyatt in 1873. Celluloid was a new way of molding plastic and keeping it hard. Hyatt used celluloid solely for making solid objects until George Eastman noticed that celluloid would make possible an entire new market for photographic equipment (fi.edu). The celluloid was flexible, light, and unbreakable that could be coated with photographic substance. In 1884, Eastman patented “a way of coating strips of paper so that they would work in a camera, and from this point he initiated the popular revolution in photography” (fi.edu). Cameras could now be smaller, mass-produced, and sold inexpensively.
In order to “dramatize his innovative camera, Eastman decided to create a word that would be short, distinctive, and pronounceable in any language (he was envisioning worldwide market). The creation of “Kodak” as a brand name began with the letter “K” because it was the first letter of his mother’s maiden name; after thought, “Kodak” materialized to him. This trademark name made its debut with the release of the Kodak Brownie in the market, alongside a notorious advertisement slogan: “You press the button—we do the rest.” Competitor “camera manufacturers struggled to match Kodak's unique combination of simplicity, portability, clever design and value for money” (encyclopedia).
The genius behind the Kodak Brownie that helped it successfully become socially institutionalized, as opposed to its contemporary, competitor counter-parts, is that it replaced the need for fragile glass plates that photographers previously had to haul around with them with older models of cameras. The Kodak Brownie had a chemically coated film that allowed permanent images to form and relieved the photographer from having to handle and carry said glass plates; essentially, the camera became compact and user-friendly. It should be noted though that photographs taken by the Kodak Brownie were of extremely poor quality compared to photographs made with glass plates; these roll film cameras were thought of as miniatures. Therefore, although the Kodak Brownie made photography accessible to the essentially the population at large, there still existed a dichotomy between commercial, professional, and elitist photography and amateur photography.
Munir, Kamal A., & Nelson Philips. “The Birth of the ‘Kodak Moment’: Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Adoption of New Technologies.” Sage Journals, vol. 26, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1665-1687. Sage Journals.
Roberts, Hilary. “Photography.” International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 8 Oct. 2008.
