George Eastman George Eastman George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and popularized the use of roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream. Roll film was also the basis for the invention of motion picture film stock in 1888 by the world's first film-makers Eadweard Muybridge and Louis Le Prince, and a few years later by their followers Léon Bouly, William Kennedy Dickson, Thomas Edison, the Lumière Brothers, and Georges Méliès. He was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, and schools of dentistry and medicine
135 film popularity, as well as the entire company legacy, early Leica cameras are considered as highly collectible items these days. The original Leica prototype holds the record as being the world's most expensive camera, selling for €2.16 million in 2012. In the earliest days, the photographer had to load the film into reusable cassettes and, at least for some cameras, cut the film leader. In 1934, Kodak introduced a "135" daylight-loading single-use cassette. This cassette was engineered so that it could be used in both Leica and Zeiss Ikon Contax cameras along with the camera for which it was invented, namely