Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/12/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]If it is about printing, it makes a little more sense to me. I couldn't see the link between the results (digital files from other companies mainly) being displayed (only) on the net and Kodak who as you state it missed the curve a decade or two ago. It would have been as anyone travelling by car having to pay royalties to the heirs of a guy called Cugnot ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas-Joseph_Cugnot Thanks for clarifying it a bit. Still Phuzzy Philippe De : "Lawrence Zeitlin " <lrzeitlin at gmail.com> Phillipe writes: "I would have thought very few (digital) photos have anything to do with Kodak at all?" - - - - - >From Wikipedia: "The first recorded attempt at building a digital camera was in 1975 by Steven Sasson , an engineer at Eastman Kodak.[11] [12]It used the then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild Semiconductorin 1973. [13] The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture its first image in December 1975." Although Kodak invented the first practical digital camera and sold modified Nikons with digital backs in the late 80s and 90s, they completely underestimated how rapidly digital photography would replace film photography. Kodak felt that film, their cash cow, would dominate the market through through 2000 and never made contingency plans for the demise of their film operations. They assumed that people would want to see their pictures as prints even after digital took hold. Despite Kodak's competence in digital photography, they devoted their marketing efforts to print kiosks and internet print systems. Hence the broad patent coverage for print distribution. I have several relatives living near Rochester, NY who work as Kodak executives. At a family gathering, the wife of one asked me if I would like to see pictures of her children. I agreed, expecting that she would pull out a stack of prints. Instead she took her digital camera out of her purse and treated me to a slide show of 50 pictures on the 3" LCD display. Her husband, a Kodak marketing guru, told me that fewer than one out of ten digital pictures ever gets printed up. Kodak lost a big patent suit when the Polaroid company claimed that the Kodak Instant picture camera infringed on the Land patents. I guess they want to recover some of the losses by suing Shutterfly and the other print distributors. I can't say I blame them. Kodak stock has dropped tenfold since the 80s. Larry Z (a disgruntled Kodak stockholder) _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information