George Eastman came from a poor family and dropped out of high school after being deemed “not especially gifted,” but that did not stop him from creating what would become one of the most successful imaging companies in the world. He overcame his beginnings to launch a business that would put the powers of photography into the hands of the average person and change the way the world remembers itself.

For Eastman, those two things were the same. Eastman had found a passion in photography that he had never known before. From never having taken a picture to starting up a company that focused on only that, Eastman was taking a risk. What was it that saw his risk through? What were the factors that took Eastman from his days as a high school dropout to being at the top of the country’s corporate ladder?

“The manifest destiny of the Eastman Kodak Company is to be the largest manufacturer of photographic materials in the world, or go to pot.

I could do nothing with my first outfit until after I had paid a professional photographer…five dollars to give me lessons. When we started out with our scheme of film photography, we expected that everybody who used glass plates would take up films. But we found that the number which did so was relatively small. In order to make a large business we would have to reach the general public. The idea gradually dawned on me that what we were doing was not merely making dry plates, but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair, to make the camera as convenient as the pencil.

A trademark should be short, vigorous, incapable of being misspelled. It must mean nothing. If the name has no dictionary definition, it must be associated only with your product. I devised the name myself. The letter ‘K’ has been a favorite with me – it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with ‘K’. The word ‘Kodak’ is the result. This is not a foreign name or word; it was constructed by me to serve a definite purpose. It has the following merits as a trade-mark word: first it is short; second, it is not capable of mispronunciation; third, it does not resemble anything in the art and cannot be associated with anything in the art. I have always admired the letter K’s ability to strike a certain tone in one’s ear, that tone of power and strength and resonance.

What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.”