Science: 500,000 Hawk-Eyes

Each & every child in the U. S. and Canada whose twelfth birthday comes this year is eligible to march into a corner drugstore or a Kodak Shoppe with its parent on or after May I and demand to be given, free, one special Model C “HawkEye” box camera and film-roll to match, made by George (“Kodak”) Eastman or Rochester, N. Y. (TIME, April 14). The Hawk-Eye is sold to all persons over or under twelve this year for $1.25. If all the twelve-year-olds are honest and do not go from store to store to get more than one free camera each, there will be more than 500,000 young picture-takers at large on the continent by the end of the year, all equipped with special gilt Hawk-Eyes.

Occasion for this expansive gesture is the 50th anniversary of George Eastman’s entry into the camera business. It will be “a token of appreciation to [those] . . . who have played so important a part.” Also, says the Eastman announcement, it will be “a means of interesting hundreds of thousands more children in picture taking.” In other words, Mr. Eastman’s celebration will by no means be a purely-sentimental one. Film-rolls for the $1.25 Hawk-Eye cost 25¢, developing and printing six Hawk-Eye snapshots costs about 40¢ Eastman sales will be swelled by Eastman generosity since, in the camera business as with safety razors, profits come not from the original article but from the replacements which keep it useful.

For Kodak’s* golden jubilee Mr. Eastman obtained the same sort of ungrudged well-deserved publicity as his friend Thomas Alva Edison had received for the golden jubilee of the electric light bulb (TIME, May 27). Hearst Colyumist Arthur Brisbane wrote: “Ruskin, who had worked to reproduce . . . [the] architecture in Venice . . . hailed the discovery of photography as a most important gift to education.” Grace Goodhue Coolidge announced: “Instead of coming together to play games and eat ice cream and cake . . . each guest [at the Eastman birthday party] is to receive a golden anniversary camera and film by means of which he will be able to satisfy and develop his appreciation of the beautiful things of nature. …”

History. Photography 50 years ago, when George Eastman entered the business, was a cumbersome and tedious pastime. One wishing to go into the country for a few snapshots had first to procure the services of a mule. On the mule would be loaded: a tent for the preparation of the “wet plates” (which were sensitized in the tent and put, dripping, into the camera); vats for the chemical solutions; a tripod which would support a piano box: a camera nearly as large as a piano box: a helper.

It was when he was a bank clerk in Rochester, N. Y., that George Eastman started to drive the mule out of photography. One day he paid a local photographer $5 for a lesson in picture-taking. Shortly afterward he found in an English magazine an article on dry photographic plates which obviated the necessity for elaborate preparation just before the picture was snapped. George Eastman worked in the evenings at home to develop a dry plate (glass covered with a sensitized emulsion; of his own. Accomplishing this, he resigned from the bank, started in business for himself.

He decided that a flexible film would be better than a rigid, and started using paper as a base. Later came the cellulose base which is used now. This development was probably the greatest in photography.

The Man. George Eastman, poor as a youth, developed an active hate of poverty. He now expresses this hate with his expensive tastes, which include: big game hunting, orchid growing, expensive music, fine food.

In his great house, surrounded by ten landscaped acres, is a trophy room filled with buffalo, deer and elk heads. For Mr. Eastman hunts not only with a camera.

On his African trip, taken with Martin Johnson, Mr. Eastman carried a cooking outfit along for himself. Deep in the jungle he would make lemon meringue pies, would take time out to stir up a chocolate cake, two dishes for which he has a classical appetite. Once he sent native runners 100 miles through the bush to invite another U. S. party to come and eat pie.

On the same floor with the trophy room he has a kitchen where he keeps his culinary art up to scratch. Another Eastman kitchen adjoins the private office at Kodak Park. Popular is the Eastman home with Rochester sub-debs. Often they are given surprise parties at which a fortune’s worth of orchids, grown in the Eastman greenhouses, is distributed.

Music-loving, George Eastman calls himself a “musical moron.” To remedy this he has an organ recital in his home daily at 7:30 a. m., a concert each Sunday. To remedy a like condition in others he founded the $6,000,000 Eastman School of Music, has given Rochester hundreds of free concerts. Albert Coates, onetime conductor at the Imperial Opera of Petrograd, dedicated to Patron Eastman his Suite after the Style of the Old Masters.

Thus Tycoon Eastman spends his time and money. Of the latter he observed: “Two courses are open to a man of wealth —he can hoard money for his heirs—or he can get it into action.” Having no heirs he has gotten some $75,000.000 into action, including $25,000,000 to the University of Rochester, $15,000,000 to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Last year he embarrassed Prime Minister Mussolini by presenting Italy with a $1,000,000 dental clinic. Il Duce was embarrassed (and chagrined) because the gift implied that Italian children had poor teeth, and because it could not be controlled by the Italian Government for two years.

*The word kodak, coined by George Eastman in 1888, is a privately owned, registered trade mark. When the word first appeared it was used to differentiate the compact, portable Eastman camera from the bulky “wet plate” photographer’s outfit. The first Kodak, sold for $25, was loaded at the factory with 100 exposures. When these pictures had been taken it was necessary to send the camera back to Rochester to have the film developed and printed, the camera reloaded.

The word, now loosely used to designate any camera, appears in most English and several foreign language dictionaries. Mr. Eastman attributes the selection of the word to the fascination the letter K held for him. It always appealed to him because of its firm, unyielding appearance. “After long meditation and concentration,” he said, the other letters grouped themselves to form the new word. As a transitive verb kodak means: to take an instantaneous picture of.