Originally posted by gaweidert Great find. A real piece of history there. Eastman took photography to the masses. He wound up buying Boston Camera Manufacturing so he could get their top camera designer on his payroll. He had a knack for bringing in the best people and the even better knack of trusting them to do their job.
For the record, Kodak started manufacturing this camera in 1892 and the patent was not granted to Boston Camera Manufacturing until 1895. Both Kodak and Boston Camera were racing to see whose patent came first. Eastman learned a lesson here and the company became a patent generating machine for the next 100 years. Most patents never used, but all unique things discovered were patented.
The book "George Eastman: A Biography" by Elizabeth Brayer is an excellent read on his life.
The 1/4"-20 1nd 3/8"-20 camera tripod socket have a long history and it's kind of funny that all cameras today use metric in every area same one.
gaweidert:
Thanks for the lead to Brayer’s Biography of Geo. Eastman. I’m researching these camera histories, and need all the references I can get, and would appreciate knowing what you use. My principal references are “Images and Enterprise” by Reese Jenkins 1975, and “Kodak Cameras, the First Hundred Years”, by Brain Coe, 1988.
About your prior post: I’m curious that the manufacture date for the No. 2 Bulls-Eye Kodak is cited as 1892 and curious about the “race” for a patent. Could you provide a source please?
The references I’ve seen, including Brayer, cite 1895 as the year Kodak introduced the Bullet, their first copy of Boston’s Bulls-Eye. The references also cite 1896 (not 1892) for introduction of the Kodak No. 2 Bulls-Eye. This was after Kodak bought the Boston company in 1895 and obtained the Bulls-Eye name copyright. It appears that the only Bulls-Eye being manufactured between 1892 and mid-1895 was Boston’s.
Brayer describes the sequence regarding the Bulls-Eye starting with Boston’s patent application in 1892, and it’s granting in 1896. Other references note that for years Eastman had been erecting substantial patent barriers to protect his business even before the issue with the Boston patent. To this end, Brayer notes that Eastman had a habit of perusing the daily published list of new patents. If there was a patent race, Eastman was not running very fast: The Boston patent was submitted in 1892, but Kodak (under Frank Brownell’s name) applied several years later.
Thanks for posting!