Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 234 posts

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#121

Post by bkjelden »

thisjustinm wrote: post #51

I worked for Kodak from 2002-2009 in their Windsor, CO plant, in the Thermal Media Manufacturing division and also wrote the occasional post for the corporate blog (thermal media == Dye sublimation printer media used in Kodak Picture Kiosks mainly). AMA. It was the same thing every year - digital is cannibalizing film faster than we thought, we need to close down X or lay off N people. A year or two of that sure but…

Do you know what happened to the facilities? I'd imagine Kodak's 2nd largest manufacturing facility had quite a footprint.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#122

Post by [deleted] »

alister wrote: post #94
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I remember 1985 is that "made in China" wasn't a phrase but "made in Japan" absolutely was, see forex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_%28film%29 and reckon that that didn't get made in a vacuum.

Not only was "made in Japan" established by 1985, but it was already thought to be superior in popular culture: In Back to the Future Part III, Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown--the 1955 version of himself--discovers that the DeLorean time machine car has broken down because of a faulty chip made in 1985. Doc Brown: Unbelievable that this little piece of junk could be such a big problem. No wonder this circuit failed. It says,…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#123

Post by dredmorbius »

leoc wrote: post #119
T0T0R0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, yeah, coulda, woulda, shoulda... but those sorts of alternate histories require some kind of A Priori knowledge that NeXT might become an incredible company, beyond that, augmenting the path of a company like NeXT will contaminate the timeline, provoking unpredictable ripple effects in the subsequent continuum. If Skynet kills John Connor, what will the machine world look like? What happens if Marty listens t…

Also: rich uncle Xerox did own PARC, and it didn't end up saving the company.

I was somewhat staggered in the late 1990s reading John Sealy Brown (former PARC director), in The Social Life of Information, which is otherwise and excellent book and one I'd still recommend, that the grand-daddy of technical reproduction businesses completely failed to mention its biggest competitor, the Apache Webserver, anywhere in the book (there was brief mention of the World Wide Web).

I've worked with some of Xerox's workhorse printers, multi-hundred-thousand-dollar systems that can crank out 120 prints per minute, sustained (hot-swappable paper trays, so you don't even have to stop to reload). But all of those were already being dwarfed in document presentation by a freely-available arrangement of software, with a $1,000 - $10,000 piece of server kit capable of kicking out millions of pages per day. A large print shop with several workhorse printers might make 1 million copies/day.

And at a fraction the cost.

Yeah, Xerox completely dropped the ball.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#124

Post by earthserver »

It's worth noting that Eastman Chemical, which was spun off from Kodak in 1994, is doing just fine as a Fortune 500 company with about 15,000 employees and a market cap of $10B USD.

It's stock is up some 200%+ since the spin-off from Kodak in '94 (compared to 400%+ for the S&P500).

If you had kept your Eastman Chemical stock after the spin-off from Kodak in '94, sold your Kodak stock, and reinvested the proceeds into Eastman Chemical, you would have more than doubled your capital, not including dividends.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#125

Post by flukus »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #50
intrasight wrote: post #43

This is something I'd posted previously on HN: I worked at Kodak as a summer intern in '85. Was the era of the disk camera. Was also my first programming job. Lotus 1-2-3. Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. The Elmgrove plant where I worked (one of a dozen facilities in the Rochester area) has over 14 thousand employees. Our start and end times were st…

The way I remember 1985 is that "made in China" wasn't a phrase but "made in Japan" absolutely was, see forex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gung_Ho_%28film%29 and reckon that that didn't get made in a vacuum.

I think it was "made in Taiwan" around then. Japan was a rich, developed nation and investment into China proper hadn't really started.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#126

Post by dewster »

angersock wrote: post #118
dewster wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Another reason why Kodak was slow to change was that its executives “suffered from a mentality of perfect products, rather than the high-tech mindset of make it, launch it, fix it...” This is actually my preferred work environment. Fuck profits, I've got a rather short life to lead, and I'd like to get a little enjoyment and intellectual satisfaction for all my efforts. Has the development of anything really lasting…

Real artists ship.

When their art is ready, which might be never. It's art after all, not a product.

When I was gainfully employed by a large telecom, very little of what I did found its way anywhere near the market.

Most go to the grave with their masterpiece unstarted, much less signed. Free your mind.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#127

Post by lyonlim »

shalmanese wrote: post #105
ghaff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense. Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carri…

I always wondered, if you're an executive with perfect foresight and your analysis shows that you could either cling to your legacy technology and make a billion dollars for 10 years and then zero dollars after that as the inevitable disruption happened or go all in on self-disruption and make 100 million dollars until the end of time, which would really be the better choice? Given that disrupting yourself would have…

Well, some forward looking companies trying to avoid being disrupted now really invest in or set up completely separate subsidiaries to explore this new areas of growth. They even go so far as to have completely different management and buildings.

The upside to this is there's no existing bias in management decisions for the new company. Instead, it offers them a potential insider look, and understanding of this new technology..and when the time comes for a pivot, they have something solid to build on.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#128

Post by miesman »

I worked for a subsidiary of Kodak around 91' and can offer a small view. My impression was that they were very aware of what was coming. They came out with the PhotoCD during this time. If you look at it was really a way to lock people into film for a longer time since you still needed to take your negatives in to be transferred.

I also remember taking a photography class in 95 and having the teacher say right at the beginning that in 10 years everything is going to be digital. My impression of the time is that everyone knew what was coming.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#129

Post by mark-r »

phreanix wrote: post #80
ghaff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly Kodak did a lot of things wrong but there's a common meme straight out of Marketing Myopia [1] that, had they only thought of themselves as a photography company rather than a film company, all would have been well. This is basically nonsense. Even had Kodak been more aggressive about cannibalizing its film sales with digital, it's unclear how much of its expertise and competitive advantage would have carri…

I wish I had saved the article but I remember reading somewhere (and just paraphrasing here) that the team that works on the iPhone make it good enough so you'll use your iPad (tablet) less, then the iPad team makes it so good you'll use your MacBook less, and so on. I think it's great forward thinking to be always trying to put one of your largest product lines out of business as a way to constantly innovate. In so…

Unlike Apple, Kodak was caught in a very hard place. With film they would collect revenue for every picture taken, through the film itself, developing, and printing. With digital you could make money on the cameras themselves, but your per-picture revenue opportunities were limited - this was the great attraction of digital. It's not the same as Apple replacing devices one-for-one.

Re: Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

#130

Post by etangent »

intrasight wrote: post #43

This is something I'd posted previously on HN: I worked at Kodak as a summer intern in '85. Was the era of the disk camera. Was also my first programming job. Lotus 1-2-3. Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. The Elmgrove plant where I worked (one of a dozen facilities in the Rochester area) has over 14 thousand employees. Our start and end times were st…

> What many at the time didn't yet recognize was that there was no business model in digital cameras that would employ 100 thousand engineers, managers, factory workers, technicians, and staff

I believe you meant to say "that there was a business model".

Post reply on HN