Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak? • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by rasz_pl » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:13 PM UTC

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,…

That might be a cute joke, but a better indication would be VHS camera used in the first Back to the future movie - 1984 made in Japan JVC GR-C1. The cool innovative tech gizmo wasnt US made.

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

#192

Post by VLM » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:21 PM UTC

rrrx3 wrote: post #14

themgt wrote: post #11

I lived in Rochester, NY and got a 20 hr/week job interning at Kodak in the slide film research department during HS in 1999-2000. I remember on one occasion my boss, a mid-level executive (head of new slide film research? something like that) asked me what I thought about digital cameras, I think both because I was young and seen as "the computer guy". I didn't own one but I'd read about them a decent amount. I told…

I had never really put much thought into it, but you're totally right- the expectation was that a chemical company (essentially) would transform itself into a Hardware & software manufacturer. That's a might, mighty leap. That Fuji was actually able to do it is even more impressive. I worked for a company that did some work for Kodak - both directly and indirectly - around some of their software initiatives & partner…

More than half a decade before OPs internship began, Kodak had already spun off a chemical company thats fairly successful to this day.

I think a good analogy would be HP. Legendary lab test equipment up till 1980 or something. Spin off the legendary lab test equipment division into a new company thats successful to this day AFAIK although they rename / rebrand every five years. The remainder tries to coast by selling imported Chinese stuff with its famous name rebranding the cheap import, but the writings on the wall as it crashes.

So for both examples, if your core competency is XYZ and you spin off your healthy XYZ division and don't really have a post spinoff plan, the empty dehydrated husk that remains will wither away pretty quickly.

Essentially you've got what banks call the good bank / bad bank strategy where you split and one fails and the productive part remains. For whatever reason companies like HP and Kodak throw the historical branding into the "bad company" side. But the "good company" sides are healthy and in business to this day.

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

#193

Post by bksteele » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:29 PM UTC

Interesting and sad too. I worked there from 1987 to 1996 mostly in the film business. However, the lab I worked in used digital imaging to analyze and measure silver halide grains used to make film emulsion! So we were well aware of progress being made in digital imaging.

When I got to photocd, the management’s focus was on replicating the quality and detail of film in the digital space, and they did not notice/understand that the lower level of quality of digital would still be useful. Their marketing was driven too much by the voices of professional photography and the ad industry’s need for the quality capability of enlargement.

My colleagues and I actually started work on a business plan to use lower resolution digital imaging for applications in real estate and other industries that could use snapshots of lower resolution. We had really just gotten started on this, when management found out via a personal dispute of one of my colleagues and hauled us in for discipline. We stated our case and said we thought Kodak should get involved, but that fell on deaf ears. Our group fell apart when Kodak did not renew one of our contracts, and he went to work for Sony writing their digital image storage software, which became one of the top tools at that time.

The impression I got was that upper management was well aware of the digital advance but completely oblivious to the speed of its progress. They thought in terms of the huge length of time it took to develop new film products and their associated factories. In 1992, they actually thought that digital would not be a serious threat until about 2005. Oops!

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

#194

Post by dmh2000 » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:44 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #22

I (and I've noticed this in others my age) still have a lingering thought that photography is expensive, and to conserve 'film'. Back in the day, even with slides, the finished cost per slide was about a buck each. It's just hard to dispel the habitual thought "is this shot worth taking?" I'm still getting used to the ability to snap a pic and casually text it to a friend instead of trying to describe it. I just down…

i'm old, and i still feel that way and unconsciously hesitate to take multiple shots. Along those lines I get a brief flash of worry when someone calls me on the phone, 'long distance', because its so expense.

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

#195

Post by krylon » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:52 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #91

bitJericho wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retro indie games are making a comeback.

Well, the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler still supports DOS programming (I just can't seem to let that go!)

Good to know!

I thought that OpenWatcom was the only one remaining to support DOS (and it appears to have been stagnant for a couple of years)...

(Not that I've done much with DOS - I did write a ~10-20 line program in C to set the serial port to specific settings, but that was all I've done on DOS.)

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

#196

Post by TheCondor » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

I hate these topics. After the fact it is always easy to make better choices and every big company has made more than a few mistakes, some of which really stand out in hindsight...

Kodak was a darling of the entire business world, for like a century. They printed money, they provided great jobs to hundreds of thousands of people. They were disruptive and put photography into everyone's hands. I think companies have a fixed life and theirs came and went.

Trust me, if they had a big pivot that was blown off, it was in to industrial chemicals or energy chemical manufacturing or something, it wasn't simply a matter of repositioning as an imaging company from a film company.

Tell me, how should Pony Express have pivoted when the telegraph came on line? Kodak, the brand and most of it was in a similar position.

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

#197

Post by themtutty » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:14 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #184

bkjelden wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, basically all along Ridge Road from Lake Ave to Mt. Read.

Remember the coal pile they used to maintain?

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

#198

Post by themtutty » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:18 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #169

I don't see it as so much of a failure of management. To grab a large slice of some niche, you need to be invested in exploiting it. In Kodak's case, that meant having all these huge facilities for film technology. There's no other way to be a big player in this niche. The upside is nobody will ever avoid thinking of your brand when they are shopping for film. The downside is you can't just change direction. If film…

Except when the retirement and health benefits of 10% of the entire city is eliminated, so that the CEO can still get his $5M "performance bonus". That's not exactly efficient use of capital.

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

#199

Post by themtutty » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:21 PM UTC

bendykstra wrote: post #12

My high school physics teacher worked at Kodak's research labs on CCDs, including some that were for use in "specialized applications," which I assume to mean spy satellites†. He said that he had quit when Kodak decided to stop shooting themselves in the foot and shot themselves in the head instead. That would have been the early 90s, I think. I don't have any specific mismanagement stories, but I'll send you his ema…

I worked a summer job in 1987 or 1988, doing 9cm glass-plate manufacturing. The main application for these plates was apparently U2/SR-71-style high-altitude photography.

Of football games, I'm sure. They always told us they could blow up the exposure to that size, anyway :)

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

#200

Post by TorKlingberg » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 2:40 PM UTC

mathgeek wrote: post #185

TorKlingberg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds like something their customers want, whether you think they should or not.