Thanks, Kodak

Jim has an old Nikon camera somewhere in all our stuff in Jefferson. As far as I know, we can still buy 35mm film for it, but I'm not sure I'd seriously consider using it to take pictures anymore.

But there was a day when it was the finest camera out there and every picture taken of our children when they were young was taken with it. Thank you, Kodak for making film.

"You press the button, we do the rest."

As much as I sometimes wish things were the way they used to be, no longer using film in my camera is not one of them. Sorry, Kodak.

Kodak was founded in 1892 and they're still around, however in 2010 they were removed from the S&P's 500 index. And sadly, in 2009, retired Kodachrome color film after 74 years.

The history of the camera is a bit complex.

Frenchman Joseph Niepce made the first photographic image in 1827. Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre invented the first photographic device in 1836, but camera-like devices actually came much earlier. The first known instance of people being aware of photography was in 5th century China.

In 1885 George Eastman began making paper film and in 1900 came out with the Brownie - the first snapshot camera.

It looked something like this.

Kodak Brownie "2012 Olympic" Camera - James Coleman

Although I haven't seen these for sale anywhere, these cute little things are souvenir cameras for the 2012 Olympics.

The digital camera was first created by Eastman Kodak engineer Steven Sasson in 1975. The first digital camera introduced to the public was Fuji which came out in 1988, but there's no real evidence it ever left Japan. The first commercially available digital camera was the 1990 Dycam Model 1.

Before digital cameras . . . still hard to believe there was a day when there were no digital cameras . . . I would think two and three times about taking a picture and making sure it was just right. I can now take 10 shots of the same thing and not think, period.

Like these pictures we took while in Courmayeur, Italy.

I'm not sure which one we declared as "good enough".

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Or these pictures riding the subway in Paris.

I think we finally just gave up.

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But then, if you take enough digital pictures . . .

you get a jewel like this one.

And this one.

Or this one.

And this one.

This one.

And this one.

And this one.

Thanks again, Kodak.