The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [40]
The first patent for a 35mm still camera was issued in England in 1908. The first full-scale production camera was the Homeos, a stereo camera, produced between 1913 and 1920. Then came the big-selling Tourist Multiple, which appeared in 1913 for $175 (at today’s prices, the cost of a $3000 Leica) and the Simplex, introduced in the U.S. in 1914. The Minigraph, by Levy-Roth of Berlin, another small camera, sold in Germany in 1915. The patent for the Debrie Sept, a combination 35mm still and movie camera, was issued in 1918, but it was not marketed until 1922. The Furet, made and sold in France in 1923, was the first cheap, small 35mm camera, and looked vaguely like today’s models. But it wasn’t until the great industrialist George Eastman came onto the scene that America became, as with so many products, the world’s leader.
The moment we finished our entrees, my wife started playfully pinching my thigh to get the hell out of the dining room. She was in a hurry to get away from those Nebraskans and back to our room. She would take her after-dinner drink with her. No argument from me. No need to wait for dessert. We’d make our own.
George Eastman was born in Waterville, New York, in July 1854. His father died when George was twelve, the elder Eastman leaving his family destitute. At fourteen, George dropped out of high school to find a job. As the history of the Eastman Kodak Company attests, he managed to overcome his economic adversity. In 1884 he patented the first roll film; in 1888 he perfected the Kodak camera, the first designed specifically for roll film. In 1892 he established his famous company in Rochester, New York—the first firm to mass-produce standardized photography equipment. His gift for organization and management, his tireless work ethic, and his lively and inventive mind made him a successful entrepreneur by his mid-twenties, enabling him to lead his company to the forefront of American industry.
Before making love, my wife and I made fun of the bulbous TV-salesmen and their blustery fraus, my wife braying, “Cooked snails! Cooked snails!” and me wheezing, “Shut up and fill your purse!” Then, after we made love, feeling close enough to her to take a chance, I said, “In a weird way, I like them.”
“That would be weird,” she said.
“Maybe that’ll be us in thirty years.”
“God forbid,” she said, coughing up Drambuie.
“You know, giving advice to newlyweds, pictures of kids—”
“Synchronized belching.”
I realized I had made a mistake. “O.K., I get it.” We were quiet for a minute, and then I rolled onto her. “And now maybe I want to get it again.”
But something bothered her. She draped her arm around me and let me nibble her neck, then sighed and went limp. We had been up early that morning for muster drill. We were both tired, and I felt a little rejected. So I just sighed and also went limp.
In the earliest days, photographers had to load their film into reusable cassettes and, at least for some cameras, cut the film leader. But in 1934 there was a huge breakthrough. Eastman Kodak introduced 35mm-wide, daylight-loading, single-use, cartridge film, principally for use in its new “Retina” camera—but, of course, adopted by competitors. In 1935 Kodak launched its 35mm Kodachrome color film. Because of its ease of use and stunning transparencies, this slide film quickly grew in popularity, becoming, by the late 1960s, the most popular photographic format. (Its lexicon remains, even if the film does not: the term slide show on our computer photo programs was derived from Kodak’s innovation.)
Our first slide camera was a Kodak Automatic 35R4, which I bought for my wife as a