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Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?

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

#181

Post by majewsky »

frankchn wrote: post #150
jwatte wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is next. They're making billions on big, complex, expansive CPUs. Someone like ARM /will/ replace them, at a much smaller dollar volume.

I am not so sure, mainly because a lot of Intel's advantage comes from its process technology. The ARM instruction set might well take over, but you still need someone to make them. Even at the current 14/16nm nodes, Intel's process is significantly smaller than TSMC or Samsung's [1]. I suspect we will see consolidation (a la GloFo/Samsung) and Intel branching out into being a foundry, but with building 10nm++ fabs r…

> The ARM instruction set might well take over

looks around himself

It hasn't already?

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

#182

Post by dev360 »

evan_ wrote: post #64
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…

Haha, I worked for a photography studio during that time period and we used your printers. We had an 8660, which destroyed itself spectacularly and violently during an event, and an ML-500, which destroyed itself somewhat more slowly and had to have virtually every mechanical part replaced numerous times. When they worked they were great, but that never lasted very long. I spoke with Kodak support people quite a bit…

Wow. yeah the printers.. I remember buying a Kodak printer that I had changed/replaced at least 3-4 times then I gave up. I liked my Kodak digital camera though - probably one of the last before they went out of business.

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

#183

Post by ethbro »

djsumdog wrote: post #148
thisjustinm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. This. During my seven years at the Windsor, CO Kodak plant (see my other comment below for more) it was crazy to hear of the heyday (I was there 2002-2009, not the heyday). It was the 2nd largest Kodak manufacturing center (bested only by Rochester) and built in the 60s. It was a sprawling campus of huge concrete bu…

There are still big plants in the US. The Volkswagen plant in South East Tennessee (thought nowhere near the scale of the plant you mentioned). But they do exist in China. Plants in some cities dump sludge into wastelands the size of lakes. Some factories are small towns unto themselves where people work, sleep and live on company property. We still need to the scale Kodak had for their market at the time, but econom…

Also notable that manufacturing at scale (including Kodak) has the side effect of leaving behind environmentally problematic Superfund sites. There's no way you're ever going to be able to compete with someone willing and able to externalize more costs than you.

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

#184

Post by driverdan »

bkjelden wrote: post #121
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.

When I lived in Rochester they were constantly knocking down empty buildings for tax savings. I'm pretty sure they ended up tearing down most of the buildings and sold a lot of the land.

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

#185

Post by mathgeek »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #173
intrasight wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent-seeking behaviour is not sustainable in a functioning capitalist society. But it can be very lucrative while it lasts, and it only has to last until you retire.

How is selling printers rent seeking?

Xerox derives much of its income from contracts rather than selling printers directly. They rent you the printer and charge you per page printed.

Source: worked tech support for better part of the 2000's and had to get Xerox printers on our networks often. Spent a lot of time updating settings when the contracts renewed and new printers were leased.

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

#186

Post by Syzygies »

rplst8 wrote: post #109
Syzygies wrote: post #27

My dad devised the "Bayer filter" used in digital cameras, in the 1970's in the Kodak Park Research Labs. It is hard to convey now exactly how remote and speculative the idea of a digital camera was then. The HP-35 calculator was the cutting edge, very expensive consumer electronics of the day; the idea of an iPhone was science fiction. Simply put, my dad was playing. This was the decade that the Hunt brothers were c…

Your dad is Bryce Bayer?

Yes

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

#187

Post by TheCondor »

bkjelden wrote: post #121
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.

There is a great bike path from Windsor to Greeley and as of about two summers ago, there was a big chunk of Kodak land and a handful of largish buildings near it. Think square miles of land maybe.

It looks like they had a rec center, deals with a local farmer to grow a crop on some their land, all the perks of a big old 20th century company, it's also a pretty great location.

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

#188

Post by Spooky23 »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #139
Spooky23 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, they figured harder problems out -- they had solved the delivery problem in suburban and rural areas for large items. there was a Sears franchise network where you could pick up stuff delivered by an 18 wheeler or rail rather than wait for parcel post or ups.

Yep. Those were called "catalog stores", as I recall, and if you had your item sent to the catalog store shipping was free (or maybe reduced price -- it's been a long time, but there was definitely some kind of break on shipping costs).

I think they had a dock and you could get really big items too. IIRC, the farmer I worked for picked up a giant generator on a flatbed at one of these places.

Not sure if that was a Sears purchase or not though.

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

#189

Post by Syzygies »

jonahrd wrote: post #136
rplst8 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dad is Bryce Bayer?

Sometimes things are made by teams of people

My dad Bryce Bayer (Kodak Rochester) worked closely with Phil Powell (Kodak England) throughout this period. I don't know what Phil Powell specifically contributed to the 'Bayer filter'. I do know that my dad would have liked to have shared credit for all related work on digital photography, but that Kodak Rochester did not want to share credit with Kodak England. I'm also a mathematician, and I see how the details may be beside the point: When one grows a tree together, one wants to view all fruit of the tree as shared.

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

#190

Post by VLM »

intrasight wrote: post #135
sedachv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is my favorite piece of Buffet's writing, for a different reason: > Over the years, we had the option of making large capital expenditures in the textile operation that would have allowed us to somewhat reduce variable costs. Each proposal to do so looked like an immediate winner. > But the promised benefits from these textile investments were illusory. Many of our competitors, both domestic and foreign, were st…

In a sense they did - with Eastman Chemicals, which was also founded by George Eastman and which was spun off in 1994? It is a Fortune 500 company with around 20,000 employees.

One way to survive international competition is to ship heavy bulk stuff. I clicked around Eastman's site and reading between the lines their revenue is about $9B and figure a buck per pound accurate to one sig fig so they're shipping maybe ten billion pounds of product annually.

Now China's entire export economy to the entire world is only thirty-something million TEU annually. Figure 50K pounds cargo per TEU and compare, and if I did the math right in my head, one obscure lube oil and plastic resin company sells about 1% of China's total worldwide export capacity.

(All of the above is accurate to about one sig fig, and if China has finally topped 40 megaTEU thats all very nice but doesn't fundamentally change the conclusion anyway)

I mean, that's not realistic to ship across the planet, just too much of it, too heavy, global shipping isn't "big enough" to eat low value product.

Now something high value per pound like photographic film, Kodak would be out of business today in the USA anyway even if film were still in business. Ready to use photo film has a high enough dollar per pound density to be worth shipping across the world.

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