[gmiller123456]

The first image sensor was created at Bell-Labs, so just creating a camera using one didn't really give them any advantage.

I think a lot of people get caught up in the idea that a company is a living breathing organism that should fight for its life to the very end. In reality, its a collection of investors and employees all with their own interest, and sometimes it's best for everyone to part their separate ways. It's not like the same people were at Kodak when the digital sensor was invented, as there was when they finally gave up on film.

The change to digital was a very slow one, and film remained a very profitable business for Kodak for a long time. IMHO, it would have been insane for Kodak to invest in semiconductor fabrication facilities from the start. Meanwhile existing semiconductor companies could leverage existing tools, employees, and facilities to produce image sensors with relatively low cost and low risk. By the time it made sense to invest in semiconductor tech, they were already too far behind, and it just made more sense for the company to milk the Kodak brand for all they could.

I see it as more like Edison promoting DC over AC. He certainly knew AC was the way to go, but he could only gain financially from DC, so that's what he promoted.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Kodak had a number of key patents on CCD imagers. They had a fab (that still exists) turning out high resolution linear and area array sensors for special applications and DSLRs. Much of the commercial satellite imagery seen on Google maps comes via Kodak sensors.

Kodak's problem is that they always bottom fed the market with their film cameras and retained the same position in digicams. The former strategy is great when you want to drive demand for consumables. It doesn't work when there is nothing to consume in the picture taking process.

[Judgmentality]

> I see it as more like Edison promoting DC over AC. He certainly knew AC was the way to go, but he could only gain financially from DC, so that's what he promoted.

I don't think Edison knew AC was better. Don't forget Tesla worked for Edison and showed him AC current, and Edison told him not to waste his time on it which is why Tesla went off to do his own thing. And anybody that knew Tesla (based on what I've read, I've obviously never met him) knew he didn't care about making money at all, so he would've happily let Edison have all the profits. Most people don't know Tesla voluntarily tore up his contract with Westinghouse that would have made him the richest man in history. I think it would have been very easy for Edison to profit from AC had he not been so stubborn.

[cr0sh]

> I think it would have been very easy for Edison to profit from AC had he not been so stubborn.

I've often wondered what could have happened had they became partners or even friends. What Tesla would have made of, say, the Edison Effect - perhaps the vacuum tube (diode, triode, etc) would have been invented much earlier? How that would have affected history (good and bad)? Would electronic digital computers have been developed earlier? Who knows...

[jhall1468]

First to market in hardware, especially 30+ years ago wasn't a minor advantage it was an enormous advantage.

And I'm not suggesting Kodak should have just went for digital in 1975, as that wasn't cost effective, or practical. But they should have, arguably, understood it was the future and at least pretended that it was a possible revenue stream. Instead they actively avoided it, and doubled-down on the "we're a chemical company" for decades. Then they went bankrupt.