To add to that: It was a Kodak engineer that effectively invented the self-contained digital camera. Kodak would have been unanimous with digital photography had they recognized what they had. Unfortunately, their leadership was in charge of a chemical company, and as such, they failed miserably to capitalize.

The first image sensor was created at Bell-Labs, so just creating a camera using one didn't really give them any advantage.

I think a lot of people get caught up in the idea that a company is a living breathing organism that should fight for its life to the very end. In reality, its a collection of investors and employees all with their own interest, and sometimes it's best for everyone to part their separate ways. It's not like the same people were at Kodak when the digital sensor was invented, as there was when they finally gave up on film.

The change to digital was a very slow one, and film remained a very profitable business for Kodak for a long time. IMHO, it would have been insane for Kodak to invest in semiconductor fabrication facilities from the start. Meanwhile existing semiconductor companies could leverage existing tools, employees, and facilities to produce image sensors with relatively low cost and low risk. By the time it made sense to invest in semiconductor tech, they were already too far behind, and it just made more sense for the company to milk the Kodak brand for all they could.

I see it as more like Edison promoting DC over AC. He certainly knew AC was the way to go, but he could only gain financially from DC, so that's what he promoted.

Kodak had a number of key patents on CCD imagers. They had a fab (that still exists) turning out high resolution linear and area array sensors for special applications and DSLRs. Much of the commercial satellite imagery seen on Google maps comes via Kodak sensors.

Kodak's problem is that they always bottom fed the market with their film cameras and retained the same position in digicams. The former strategy is great when you want to drive demand for consumables. It doesn't work when there is nothing to consume in the picture taking process.

> I see it as more like Edison promoting DC over AC. He certainly knew AC was the way to go, but he could only gain financially from DC, so that's what he promoted.

I don't think Edison knew AC was better. Don't forget Tesla worked for Edison and showed him AC current, and Edison told him not to waste his time on it which is why Tesla went off to do his own thing. And anybody that knew Tesla (based on what I've read, I've obviously never met him) knew he didn't care about making money at all, so he would've happily let Edison have all the profits. Most people don't know Tesla voluntarily tore up his contract with Westinghouse that would have made him the richest man in history. I think it would have been very easy for Edison to profit from AC had he not been so stubborn.

> I think it would have been very easy for Edison to profit from AC had he not been so stubborn.

I've often wondered what could have happened had they became partners or even friends. What Tesla would have made of, say, the Edison Effect - perhaps the vacuum tube (diode, triode, etc) would have been invented much earlier? How that would have affected history (good and bad)? Would electronic digital computers have been developed earlier? Who knows...

First to market in hardware, especially 30+ years ago wasn't a minor advantage it was an enormous advantage.

And I'm not suggesting Kodak should have just went for digital in 1975, as that wasn't cost effective, or practical. But they should have, arguably, understood it was the future and at least pretended that it was a possible revenue stream. Instead they actively avoided it, and doubled-down on the "we're a chemical company" for decades. Then they went bankrupt.

It's a little bit more complicated than that.

Kodak was not a camera company as much as they were a chemical company. They made film, they made developing agents, glass, etc. Eastman Chemical was formerly a subsidary of Kodak, and they had even broader chemical expertise -- fibers, explosives, involved in the Manhattan Project, etc.

So transitioning to digital photography would have meant giving up almost all of their expertise and present business interests. It would have meant slashing their revenue and completely reinventing the company.

Of course, all of that happened anyway. But one can imagine how difficult it would be to pull that trigger yourself. Doing the long-term responsible thing might have even led to shareholder lawsuits...

Shareholders in public companies can easily sell their stock and invest in something else if it seems to be the future. And employees can (not so easily) find another job. A company doesn't need to be eternal. Once upon a time, wasn't a company required to have a fixed purpose and maybe a time limit?

>Shareholders in public companies can easily sell their stock and invest in something else if it seems to be the future.

That doesn't preclude lawsuits. American business law is fucking stupid.

Huh? Under what scenario would the shareholders get sued for selling their stock?

Also, people complain too much about lawsuits versus corporations. Wells Fargo just took a $1.6 billion charge for legal expenses. That's something like 700 person-years at $400/hr, 16 hrs/day. The stupidity isn't the system that allows the lawsuits, it's the corporate mindlessness that wastes the equivalent of 1,000 people's lifetimes on arguing that they didn't do anything wrong instead of just saying "welp you got us".

There's a popular perspective that companies are better off always taking drastic action even if it will probably lead to going down in flames rather than milking a business through an inevitable decline. And that's not always the case.

It's of course natural and sensible for companies to pursue strategies for new products and product lines as existing ones mature and decline. But if doing so means investing in new businesses where you have no particular expertise or advantage, it's unclear if you're benefiting your owners (i.e. shareholders) by doing so.

There's plenty to criticize Kodak about. But it was going to be in a very tough position no matter what. And we can name plenty of other businesses that have been completely replaced by new unrelated technologies. Keuffel and Esser wasn't going to become a calculator company.

Kodak was a pioneer in digital cameras. They made plenty of them. But they focused on compact cameras, with the EasyShare brand, and smartphones absolutely devastated sales of those.

Ultimately the top tier camera makers had enough cash reserves and brand recognition to sort their shit out and build digital cameras that were actually good. Then they could differentiate again on bodies and lenses.

There was a long time there where everyone thought the startups and the consumer electronics companies were going to win. Wasn't there a time when Sony had the best digital cameras? Digital cameras were one of the big 'disruptions' in the early information age.

The top camera makers, Nikon and Canon, were top camera makers before digital. Smartphones killed the compact cameras market that had the most companies and the survivors are the ones that had successful interchangable lens systems or were able to pivot to mirrorless.

Sony is the other currently successful camera maker. They bought Konica-Minolta, and made the switch to mirrorless early. Most importantly, they manufacture the best sensors that everyone else except for Canon uses.

Most of the current digital camera brands were analog camera makers. Panasonic is the exception and they partnered with Leica.

This seems like an argument, but we're in agreement.

Also Fujifilm in mirrorless but they're probably a smaller player than Sony.

We'll see what happens in the long run. With advances in smartphones and computational photography, interchangeable lens cameras increasingly look like a niche. And the big camera makers have been really slow to do anything other than incrementally tweak their bodies.

Clearly, they'll still be the go tos for pros and advanced amateurs for a long time but that's barely a mass market.

Sony did successfully use digital to become a respected camera maker--and they still have some of the best cameras in their category today. But, by and large, the traditional consumer electronics companies focused on point and shoots, which have been almost totally erased by phones.

You're not wrong. The upstarts may not have weathered the first rounds of the battle but I know people are pretty annoyed at the lock-in.

There was supposed to be a format standard for lenses to solve this problem, but one of my camera-snob friends pointed out that while you can physically thread the lens on another body, things like autofocus probably won't work. So in the end it got people to buy new lenses but still not be able to pick best of breed from each generation.