Kodak Digitizing history

1890 - A dude named Herman Holerith, founder of a company that would become IBM, invents a punch card system to tabulate the US Census.

By 1900, he released the Brownie, the first mass-marketed camera.

In 1923, Eastman Kodak (that’s us!) introduced the first commercially successful amateur movie camera in America, the Cine-Kodak.

For 16mm, that usurper was 8mm film, which hit the scene in 1932.

When Kodachrome first launched in 1935 it was first sold as a 16mm movie format.

Hollywood began using magnetic tape for recording in the 1950’s, but this technology was costly and unaffordable for everyday use.

1953 - A lady named Grace Hopper invents the first programming language, changing the way that data is translated and stored for forever.

1957 - The SEAC (Standards Electronic Automatic Computer) is invented as the first computer that could scan an image, store it, and recreate it into pixels.

1971 - The first Charge-Coupled Devices are invented.

1975 - The first digital camera is invented.

This led to the creation of Macrovision, a system of coding that would prevent users from making their own copies of VHS tapes at home. It’s also why you see copy warnings every time you slid a new VHS tape into the VCR. Invented in 1983, it was released to the market and the first film to use Macrovision was The Cotton Club.

1986 - A group of folks starts working on the JPEG format, a way to compress images into smaller pieces of data called bytes.

In 1995, big names like Apple and IBM came together to demand a single format, which encouraged Phillips and Sony to shake hands and adopt a standard format that could be used in all computers.

Up until its discontinuation in 2009, Kodachrome was the oldest selling brand of color film in existence.

In fact, Kodachrome had such an impact on the film industry, that a feature length Netflix movie by the same name came out in 2017.