Kodak (Eastman Kodak Company)

George Eastman, a bank clerk and keen amateur, started the Eastman Dry Plate Company in Rochester, New York, on 1 January 1881. His goal was to make photography “as convenient as the pencil”. He made the business out of roll film, the Kodak camera of 1888 and cheap processing, and the company became Eastman Kodak in 1892.

For most of the 20th century Kodak dominated film, paper and chemicals, and invented much of colour photography: Kodachrome, Ektachrome and Kodacolor. Its engineers also built the first digital camera (1975) and invented the Bayer filter (1976). But a company that made its money on film found it hard to switch to digital, and it filed for bankruptcy in 2012.