The Timeless Genius of Kodak’s George Eastman

Great read, thanks for posting this.

The £100m that Eastman donated to charities over the span of his lifetime translates to roughly US$ 7 billion today, assuming 1926 money (which is when he made a £800k donation to London hospitals for the poor, according to Wikipedia.) [1]

Though such conversions should be taken with a large grain of salt, that definitely puts him in the major league of philanthropy [2]. One amazing dude indeed.

[1] http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/His...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthropy#Some_Large_Individ...

Also, one of his most important (but lesser known) contribution is the funds that he provided for the construction of the present MIT campus (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Tech...)

One key; he knew that people, real individuals, took pictures. Kodak's terminal mistake was forgetting this, coming to believe their customer was retailers. Retailers, benefitting from the multiple visits customers made to process just a few dozen pictures, threatened to drop Kodak products if Kodak moved into digital on a large scale. Ego, Kodak stayed with film and wasn't ready for the mass migration to digital photography. Kodak chose retailers over end users ... abandoning Eastman's successful user-focused approach.

Particularly if you find Eastman's life and accomplishments interesting, I second the article's suggestion that if you're ever in Rochester, NY you should stop by the George Eastman House.