The end of Kodachrome

[TheMercenary]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/us...m.html?_r=1&hp

I don't understand why Kodak would want to kill off the industry by refusing to produce any more chemicals. Maybe it was simple cost issues that prevented them from helping this one guy out but it seems a shame to think that there are still some fantastic pictures out there that will never be developed.

[xoxoxoBruce]

MacGyver could do it.

[Lamplighter]

Merc, I had the same feelings when I saw that on TV.
It seems professional photographers had a very high regard
for the technical side of that film.

About 2 years ago we had an old roll of it developed
(sent somewhere by our local camera shop),
and the shots came out fine even thou the roll had been sitting
in a closet for several years.

I guess that behind the scenes Kodac has been hit hard by the digital revolution.
But this is one corporation that truely did remarkable research,
not only in snapshot films but in filters and light properties of all sorts.

I'm still surprised though because, although I've been retired for 10+ years,
I didn't think the resolution of digital camera images were yet good enough
to meet other professional needs (e.g., ophthalmology)

[TheMercenary]

I hope someone comes up with a fix around the lack of chemicals from the company.

[kerosene]

Sadly, this is why. We live down the road from this plant and they are tearing down these buildings here pretty soon. Kodak use to be the main employer for Windsor residents. Now, most people commute to work in Fort Collins or Denver.

[footfootfoot]

I can't begin to explain how unfortunate this is. Kodak has been dead to me for about a decade or more.

Thank an MBA for the death of our culture.

I expect that in ten years Kodak will be like Polaroid, just a name for an unrelated product.

[tw]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

I expect that in ten years Kodak will be like Polaroid, just a name for an unrelated product.

Who first developed the digital camera? Kodak. Whose management stifled that innovation? Kodak.

Polariod made a stab at new products. Digital paper was one attempt.

[footfootfoot]

yeah, but Polaroid's mgmt was unfocused (no pun intended) and vague after digital came along. In their defense, what could they have done? Perhaps, they could have decided to just scale back and keep the most important fine art emulsions that people will still use and make a niche, albeit a smaller one.

Though in reality, Polaroid's problems began long before the digital age. I know a number of people who worked for them as subs and they all had stories about incompetence, lack of vision, in fighting, etc. that really hobbled the company.

If you were to tell me that corporate saboteurs had somehow infiltrated the upper echelons of Kodak's management, I would think "Well, that certainly explains everything."

[xoxoxoBruce]

They saw the future, and it is digital... they could go with it or fade away. But either way, would the connie-sewers/artists that would stick with film, justify the operation of chemical plants necessary to support them? Especially with tough environmental laws on chemical operations.

If the market is there, couldn't a small company leap into the gap, even if they had make a deal with Kodak for use of patents?

[footfootfoot]

Kodak is still dead to me, and long before digital became a reality Kodak was still fucking up what was great, trying to figure out ways to squeeze an extra scintilla of silver out of a roll of film ending up with crap and then spending a small fortune on advertising trying to get us to believe it was raining when they pissed on our shoes.

I still predict that Kodak will be extinct in 10 or 20 years.

They won't sell or share the patents and info and equipment they no longer use.

At one point they tried to force the chemists who made their Infra Red film into early retirement only to discover that you couldn't take some fresh faced young grad form RIT and hand him the recipe and expect him to make it work. They ended up having a huge shortage until they could entice their old chemists back and then they still had to eliminate a few emulsions.

They are fuck ups in my book.

[Flint]

They successfully transitioned with the healthcare industry, moving from film development to digital imaging. Since then, they've broken with the Kodak brand and their healthcare division is now called Carestream.

[footfootfoot]

Despite their ironic involvement in healthcare they are still dead to me.

[tw]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

At one point they tried to force the chemists who made their Infra Red film into early retirement only to discover that you couldn't take some fresh faced young grad form RIT and hand him the recipe and expect him to make it work. They ended up having a huge shortage until they could entice their old chemists back and then they still had to eliminate a few emulsions.

Your entire post can be summed up in the only reason why. What is taught in business schools.

Polaroid had a list of opportunities so long that it should be considered a disaster like 11 September. For example, digital paper was too little too late. They eventually sold the technology off. One of so many attempts, too little too late, included Zink and Oynx. Due to so business school graduates that routinely stifle innovation, Zink was not developed until 2001. Only because even business school graduates finally realized they had to innovate.

Once Dr Land stopped innovating, Polaroid was doing nothing more to advance mankind.

What is a Polaroid camera? A copier machine. And a printer. Advanced optics and graphical recognitions were other wide open opportunities for a company who also pioneers how human vision works. Obvious next steps - except to bean counters.

Meanwhile another nearby east coast company was also being as anti-American as Polaroid. Xerox. The HP All-In-One printers on every desktop is what Xerox should have been doing twenty years earlier. And could not because the east coast is dominated by business school graduates.

HP is the definition of a patriotic company. Their original market was tone (sound) generators for highest tech companies. Then moved into electronic test equipment that only the richest companies could need. Then moved into other completely new markets including hospital equipment, GPS (in the 1970s long before anyone heard of them), oscilloscopes (what TV companies would have developed if being innovative), power supplies, and computers. HP developed integrated circuits, microprocessors, and was a world leader in LEDs. Then into calculators and wrist watches. Then those 400 pound computers started becoming so small as to be desktop machines. They even took over every market that DEC once dominated.

HP moved into networking and office equipment. HP now does what Xerox and Polaroid both should have been doing if they were patriotic American. DIX - the three companies that developed Ethernet: Dec, Intel, and Xerox. Instead Xerox, Polaroid, etc were myopic as any business school graduate would be. That is where cancer originates.

An engineer or scientist does today what takes four or ten years later to appear on spread sheets. Therefore engineers and scientists are an expense; not an asset. In companies using a communism taught in business schools, then product people must be cost controlled. Which is why Kodak had the digital camera almost a decade before anyone else. And business school graduates could not measure its value on the spread sheets.

Because of their communism, they saw Kodak as the world's largest consumer of silver. That proved only business school graduates where making Kodak profitable. Higher profits due to larger cash flows. No business school disciple can understand something innovative. A definition of a business school graduate.

Innovation stifled for the same reason that GM did not sell the engine they developed over 30 years earlier. That same engine was inside every American patriotic car since the early 1990s. And still not in all GM cars in 2005. These are not accidents. These stifled innovations are what business schools preach.

Innovation cannot be measured on any spread sheet until long after that innovation is obsolete. Only those brainwashed in business school philosophies would not understand that. Most of the 'brainwashed' did not even go to business school. I would speculate that a majority reading this are also that brainwashed.

Polaroid was chock full of potential new products - and did nothing. Remember their self-focusing camera - the SLR680 and Sonar One Step? Today, that technology is found even on rear bumpers of many cars. Is an entire industry in automating factories. Polaroid pioneered the technology. But with management educated in business schools, it could not do what HP still routinely does every decade since before WWII. Or ditto for Cisco and Amazon. Other companies that thrive because business school graduates and another type of anti-American - stock brokers - are not obstructing them.

[footfootfoot]

Exactly.
And a bonus question:
What do you call 10,000 MBAs at the bottom of the ocean?


A good start.

[Shawnee123]

Youse guys are too funny.