George Eastman

BiographyEastman was born in Waterville, some 20 miles southwest of Utica, in Oneida County, New York. He was the third and youngest child of George Washington Eastman and Maria Kilbourn, both of the bordering town of Marshall. In 1854, his father established Eastman’s Commercial College in Rochester and moved the family to that city in 1860. Two years later, his father died and Eastman left high school to support the family and had begun working as an office boy by the age of 14.An advertisement for the Kodak camera.

On September 4, 1888 Eastman registered the trademark Kodak, which was simply a combination of some of his favorite letters, and received a patent for his camera which used roll film. He coined the phrase "You press the button, we do the rest." The camera owner could return it to Kodak with a processing fee of $10, and the company would develop the film and return 100 pictures, along with a new roll of 100 exposures.Eastman endowed the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, and chose as its first director Alfred Klingenberg, who was succeeded by the American composer and conductor Howard Hanson.

Hanson made Eastman's school one of the most prestigious music schools in America.In 1925, Eastman gave up the day-to-day management of Kodak, becoming chairman of the board. He thereafter concentrated on philanthropic activities. In his last two years Eastman was in great pain. He had trouble standing and his walking became a slow shuffle that was caused by a (unnamed at the time) degenerative disorder that was affecting his spine.

A modern diagnosis would probably cite spinal stenos is, a narrowing of the spinal canal caused by arthritis in the joints of the back. He grew depressed knowing he would likely be spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair, something he saw his mother having to use in the last two years of her life.In 1932, he ended his own life by a single gunshot to the heart with a semi-automatic pistol, leaving a suicide note that read, "My work is done. Why wait?" Eastman, who never married, is buried at Kodak Park in Rochester, New York.