Mastodawn

Just saw this brilliant doco on the rise and fall of Kodak Australia.
From a bloke hand-coating glass plates in a Melbourne cellar in 1884, to the massive Coburg factory pumping out film for the whole Asia-Pacific, employing thousands and capturing Aussie life for 120 years.
Then digital killed it overnight. Last roll came off the line in 2004 with barely a word.
The silent factories of our industrial past... gone, but not forgotten.
Worth a watch if you’re from Melbourne or just love our manufacturing history.

#AustralianHistory #Melbourne #Kodak #IndustrialHeritage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as_ULoMwHHU

The Silent Kodak Factory: The Rise and Fall of Australia’s Film Empire

YouTube

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Abram Kedge🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦1d ago

@mojo I lived for about 15 years in Rochester NY, almost everyone I met over about 50 had worked at some time for Kodak. I noticed a suspiciously high cancer rate among them - anything similar in Melbourne?

The George Eastman house is worth a visit - he was a very eccentric character - he didn't like the proportions of his large atrium room, so he had it cut in half, jacked up one entire side of the house and moved it a few yards until he had the space he wanted in the room.

An engineer at Eastman Kodak invented the digital camera. He brought it to the board of directors. They rejected it, because it was not related to their core business - which was turning silver into photographic film. Cameras for Kodak were only ever a way to further that trade.

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Mojo ♻️

@AbramKedge I have no idea if anyone was affected healthwise in Melbourne — never seen any reports of a cancer cluster like in Rochester.
The Coburg plant used heaps of nasty chemicals though, and the site was left contaminated (they had to remove a lot of topsoil before redeveloping it).
That George Eastman story is gold — proper eccentric vibes. The irony of Kodak inventing digital only for the board to bin it because “we sell film” still hurts.
Apple helped popularise it with the 1994 QuickTake 100 (made with Kodak) — one of the first affordable colour digital cameras for everyday users. Then phones killed the lot.
Ironies keep piling up, eh?