Today was spent at the Eastman House and Filmography Museum in Rochester. It was AWESOME!
George Eastman grew up near Utica, NY and moved to Rochester with his family when he was around six years old. His father died shortly thereafter and his mother, for reasons unknown, stayed in Rochester and raised her three children. One daughter died, leaving George and his sister, Ellen.
George never married and remained a bachelor his whole life. Ellen married a man named George and they had two children, Elllen and Royal, whom George spent much time with during his life.
George worked for a bank and would stay up late at night fiddling around with chemicals to find a better way to process photographs. He discovered that he could take shortcuts and end up with the same results. Eastman's first company was specifically for the processing of photographic glass plates for professional photographers. Because glass plates were very heavy, he dappled in using celluloid.
During the depression in the late 1800's, George lost his factory and his business. At the time, minister from somewhere I can't remember was also doing the same thing. Both men applied for patents, but the minister met with much flack from his congregation and town because they felt that their minister should be concerned with more Godly things than playing around with chemicals. Subsequently, the patent office awarded the patent to George Eastman. Many, many years later, the minister sued Eastman, who settled out of court for $5 million.
After the depression, George tried to find a way to bring his company back in business. Because picture taking was only done by professional photographers, George wondered if he could devise a simple camera for the general population to use. He hired some Engineers from MIT and designed the Brownie camera. The first camera cost about $25.00 apiece and would hold enough film for 100 pictures. Later, he developed the Brownie II, which sold for $1.00. The consumer would purchase the camera, take their pictures, send the whole camera back to the Kodak factory, which would develop the pictures. The camera would then be sent back to the consumer with a new roll of film installed and all of their pictures developed.
The name Kodak is a word George made up. He was very worldly and wanted a one-syllable word that would be pronounced the same way in every dialect.
George, the philanthropist, gave away $100 million dollars over his lifetime. He started the Eastman Dental Clinic, The Eastman School of Music and Rochester University. Also, because so many of his chemists and engineers came from MIT, much of his money went to that school, as well.
George died by suicide in 1932 with a simple note that stated, "My work is done."
The House:
This is the atrium where George had breakfast every morning. There is an organ at one end of the room. Promptly at 7:30 every morning, George would come down for breakfast and his organist would play music that represented George's mood that day.
The elephant on the wall is a trophy from a Safari hunting trip George went on when he was 74 years old. He went when he was 72, stating that he wanted to kill an elephant. He didn't succeed, so went back two years later, and got the elephant he wanted.
The elephant that he shot had only one tusk, which was mounted and displayed on the floor. You can see it in front of the door just below the elephant head. The head on the wall has wooden tusks. In fact, this is not the original elephant. No one knows what happened to the original. It is determined that it eventually deteriorated. When the Eastman house was being renovated, the company that did the original taxidermy told the foundation that the original owner had made a cast of the elephant head and asked if they would like a replica made.
The picture on the left is the front foyer. The picture on the right is looking up the spiral staircase to the roof.
The Library:
This is the billiard room and "family" room. The sofa that you see behind the billiard table is raised on a platform. This was so that people who sat on it could see the billiard table.
The garden as seen from George's mother's bedroom. She lived with him her whole life.
This picture shows all of the equipment necessary to take a photograph. The camera was basically an incidental. The work was in mixing the chemicals before and after the shot was taken and processing the exposed glass plates onto paper.
Pictures from the museum. The one on the left is a drive-in movie projector. The one on the right is MY camera. This is a Konica/Minolta DiMAGE X. Mine is a DiMAGE Xg.
