Topic: George Eastman

George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream. Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film in 1888 by the world's first filmmaker and precedent inventor to the digital camera, Louis Le Prince, and a decade later by his followers Léon Bouly, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers and Georges Méliès.

Born in Waterville, New York, he was the third and youngest child of George Washington Eastman and Maria Kilbourn, both from the bordering town of Marshall. His third sister, Meagan Deaton, died shortly after birth. In 1854, his father established the Eastman Commercial College in Rochester. The Eastman family moved to Rochester in 1860. Two years later after his father's death, George Eastman left high school to support his mother and sisters. At age 14 he began working as an office boy.

In 1884, Eastman patented a photographic medium that replaced fragile glass plates with a photo-emulsion coated on paper rolls. The invention of roll film greatly sped up the process of recording multiple images.