by Higgenbotham » Wed Jun 17, 2026 5:08 pm
Inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, in 1888. Over the next century, the word Kodak — which George Eastman made up — essentially became synonymous with the act of taking pictures. It democratized photography with the affordable Brownie camera in 1900, then revolutionized it again in 1935 with Kodachrome, one of the first commercially successful color films. In 1975, a Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera — and by the end of that decade, the company was making billions of dollars per year.
But throughout much of the 20th century, Kodak was also, for all intents and purposes, a U.S. military contractor. Alongside its subsidiary Eastman Chemical, Kodak produced warplane lacquer, gas mask parts, and refined uranium for the Manhattan Project.
“A company like Kodak, which we think of as this company that pioneered the snapshot that lives in this cultural realm, is deeply embedded in changing the substance of our world,” Lovejoy told Grist. That has had a profound impact on the environment and on frontline communities. But to most of the world, it’s still just the company that makes cameras. In her book, Lovejoy recounts the story of a Kodak representative telling people impacted by a methylene chloride spill, “We’ve never been thought of as a chemical company … we just made the yellow boxes.”
That, Lovejoy said, might be the company’s public image, but it was never the truth. “Internally, they identified themselves as a chemical company,” she said. And for Lovejoy, “the environment and the military can’t be separated.”
“The history of this material comes through poison gas, and it comes through the atomic bomb, and it comes through all of these materials that are really part of the history of the 20th and now 21st century.”
Household names like DuPont, General Electric, and Exxon are among those that have similarly left the land, the water, and the air in the communities around them polluted — often while also serving as contractors for entities such as the Department of Defense. All have kept their environmental and social harms (and military ties) largely out of public view until decades after the fact, when they’re sometimes forced to pay for remediation.
https://grist.org/accountability/buoyed ... -to-light/
I think we have 2 analogs to that today:
1. Gain of function and mRNA
2. Data Centers
So, for example, we have Amazon primarily making money (the majority of its profit) from government contracts, mostly data centers, while they tout themselves as just the nice guys who deliver the environmentally friendly brown boxes to your door.
[quote]Inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, in 1888. Over the next century, the word Kodak — which George Eastman made up — essentially became synonymous with the act of taking pictures. It democratized photography with the affordable Brownie camera in 1900, then revolutionized it again in 1935 with Kodachrome, one of the first commercially successful color films. In 1975, a Kodak engineer invented the first digital camera — and by the end of that decade, the company was making billions of dollars per year.
But throughout much of the 20th century, Kodak was also, for all intents and purposes, a U.S. military contractor. Alongside its subsidiary Eastman Chemical, Kodak produced warplane lacquer, gas mask parts, and refined uranium for the Manhattan Project.[/quote]
[quote]“A company like Kodak, which we think of as this company that pioneered the snapshot that lives in this cultural realm, is deeply embedded in changing the substance of our world,” Lovejoy told Grist. That has had a profound impact on the environment and on frontline communities. But to most of the world, it’s still just the company that makes cameras. In her book, Lovejoy recounts the story of a Kodak representative telling people impacted by a methylene chloride spill, “We’ve never been thought of as a chemical company … we just made the yellow boxes.”
That, Lovejoy said, might be the company’s public image, but it was never the truth. “Internally, they identified themselves as a chemical company,” she said. And for Lovejoy, “the environment and the military can’t be separated.”
“The history of this material comes through poison gas, and it comes through the atomic bomb, and it comes through all of these materials that are really part of the history of the 20th and now 21st century.”
Household names like DuPont, General Electric, and Exxon are among those that have similarly left the land, the water, and the air in the communities around them polluted — often while also serving as contractors for entities such as the Department of Defense. All have kept their environmental and social harms (and military ties) largely out of public view until decades after the fact, when they’re sometimes forced to pay for remediation. [/quote]
https://grist.org/accountability/buoyed-by-a-retro-revival-kodaks-dark-environmental-past-is-coming-to-light/
I think we have 2 analogs to that today:
1. Gain of function and mRNA
2. Data Centers
So, for example, we have Amazon primarily making money (the majority of its profit) from government contracts, mostly data centers, while they tout themselves as just the nice guys who deliver the environmentally friendly brown boxes to your door.