"Actually they have been a defense contractor since World War II or maybe even earlier." a very small DOD contractor. $80m over 10 years............... sad.

That's true. The number of contracts they have received dwindled after 2000. Before that it was much more lucrative:

During World War II, RDX, a powerful explosive, was manufactured for the U.S. government at Holston Ordnance Works at Tennessee Eastman sites. At the peak of production near the end of the war, the ordnance plant was producing a million and a half pounds of explosives each day. Tennessee Eastman was responsible for managing the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee which produced enriched uranium for the

Eastman Chemical Company

They were also involved in plastics manufacturing and development.

John

Just to be clear, Eastman Chemical is a Fortune 500 company that resulted when Eastman Kodak (which is the subject of the original post) spun off its chemical business in 1994. I don't remember why they did this, especially since the chemical business was (and is) such a stable, generally profitable business.

So, Eastman Chemical has nothing to do (anymore) with Eastman Kodak, and hasn't had any relationship with them for almost two decades. Thus, Eastman Kodak hasn't had any defense contracts (at least not of the kind described above) since the time of that divestiture.

In my former life in digital printing we were in strategic alliance with Kodak for photo printing. It turns out they made their money from selling the print paper, not the film. Film was used to sell paper. Cameras likewise.

So, Eastman Chemical has nothing to do (anymore) with Eastman Kodak, and hasn't had any relationship with them for almost two decades. Thus, Eastman Kodak hasn't had any defense contracts (at least not of the kind described above) since the time of that divestiture.
=================
Except for the ones I linked before that post which don't amount to enough to sustain the company. The only reason I posted it was because someone said that historically they only made cameras and film. In hindsight, they probably regret having divested Eastman Chemical.

Either way the number of well known companies disappearing is pretty depressing. Sorry to see them go (unless their denials are for real).

John

A lot more companies are going to bite the dust. One of the biggest problems, as always, is debt. The industry with the highest debt load is the airline industry, and look what has happened to them over the years.

I just watched most of the old movie "Bullitt" last night, mostly to remember what San Francisco looked like when I first moved out here. The final scene is at the airport, and they show all these airplanes in the background, starting with Pan Am, and then PSA both, of course, long gone. It got me to thinking about all these HUGE airline companies that are no longer around:

Pan Am
TWA
Eastern Airlines
Braniff
PSA
Northeast
Allegehney (sp?) (they more or less became US Air)

That's from memory. I then did a search and, my goodness, found this unbelievable Wiki list:

Defunct Airlines

So, carry too much debt (and the airlines are the poster children of leveraged companies), and you WILL go out of business.

P.S. Here is one of my YouTube videos, from a client film transfer, showing a few old airlines:



and an even older one from my dad's film, from 1933, with the two of us talking about the airplanes.



OK, I have definitely wandered off the reservation ...

Here is another article where Kodak is saying that "Kodak is committed to meeting all of its obligations and has no intention of filing for bankruptcy.”

John

A lot more companies are going to bite the dust. One of the biggest problems, as always, is debt..............
=====================Other reasons are:

increase in competition, weak management, bad location (or a location that turned bad), loss if clients, insurance companies that stiffed you after an accident, major increases in wholesale costs of goods and supplies related to your business, and in today's top down food chain an inability to borrow money that wasn't that difficult only a few years ago.

John

Braniff had the best looking stewardesses. Real knockouts.
JJK

Braniff had the best looking stewardesses. Real knockouts.The airline that took this to the max (they wouldn't be able to do today what they did then) was the original Southwest Airlines. We had a case on them back when I was in business school, and the founder (Lamar Muse) came to the classroom and talked to us afterward. He was a total original, although if you've ever seen Ted Turner, you get at least part of the idea. He had two ways to attract customers when the airline first started: fly out of smaller airports closer to downtown, and dress his stewardesses (as they were known back then) in orange hot pants and boots.

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/southwest-flight-attendants.jpg

Here in California, PSA was also noted for a somewhat similar approach.

@musicvid ... looks a bit like an HDR image... nice work...

Need for achievement (N-ach, as it was labeled by Atkinson and McClelland who developed the research) reached its peak in the U.S. somewhere around 1870; then it began a long, slow decline. About a century after the peak in N-ach, visible decline in arts, economy, and other social functions typically begins to manifest.

I got my Ph.D. in psychology in the 1960s. At the time, the U.S. still was pretty high, Japan was pretty high, but the highest N-ach was in China. Based on the research, I told my students that China would become a world power. China: a nation looked down upon by us as an inept bunch of peasants under the Communist thumb - so that nation was to become a major power? They laughed, some got angry and shouted me down. Such a thing, of course, was preposterous; the U.S. of A. always would be the world's richest country. It would never decline. We were the Shining City on the Hill, sent here by God Himself to fix the rest of the world. My crazy ideas were not kindly received at ultra-conservative SMU.

As a child, I heard a preacher say that Paul the Evangelist was sent to the West instead of to the great civilizations of the East for one reason: To insure Christianity as the religion of the U.S. some 1800 years later. God plans ahead.

The British, in their day, called it "the white man's burden."

I'm sure the Spanish before them - after they had stolen the Mexicans' gold and had become the world's richest nation - had their own notions of invincibility. Probably the same even for the Egyptians who refused to adopt iron-based weapons - so prone to break, so easy to rust. Couldn't adapt with the times, determined against all odds to hold on to past copper- and bronze-age glory, "the way our forefathers made us great."

At about the time that I heard that sermon, I had an uncle who bought a farm. Every year, dad and I would help him clear stones from his field. They had been exposed because the topsoil had washed away with winter rains. I looked at his furrows and saw that they went straight down the steep hills. When I asked him why he didn't practice contour plowing so that the rains wouldn't take so much of his soil, he chuckled and admitted that it would help; but "he was brought up to plow straight, and the straighter the better." He would not adapt. He lost the farm.

Must have been the same at Kodak with that fellow who developed the early digital camera. By now, they might have become a digital powerhouse. Like my farmer uncle, they chose to ignore the future and cling to the past.

As I write, the Republicans trash one candidate after another as each fails the savior test. But where is the savior who can restore our lost N-ach?

Pretty sad; but that's how the world progresses: Out with the past, fixed in its rigid ways, in with the better. Digital is better - long live film (in our fond memories). Long live Western civilization. It was a good run, really . . .

I realize that "coolie" is a historical term for manual laborers from China and India during the 19th century and early 20th century, however, it has now become a racial slur. Perhaps you were unaware of that. I remember when "gay" meant "happy."

thanks for the reminder. I'll fix it.

I don't know if you need to change or fix anything. I have heard that word all my life and many of my best frieds are Asian. I have never once heard this term used or referred to as being derogatory. It is true that Wikipedia does claim it to be a racial slur (the quote above is more or less directly from their page). However, I then looked at "real" dictionaries (Webster, OED, etc.) and found no reference to a slang or derogatory usage.

Wikipedia is very good, but it sometimes is the reflection of just one or two people, and lacks a real, educated editor for most pages.

Clearly, even its original use was not entirely polite (note: all dictionaries use the word "offensive" to refer to even its original meaning), but the idea that we need to banish this word when referring not only to the Asian workers conscripted to work on the Union-Pacific railroad, but also any other group, Asian or otherwise, who are similarly required to work in near-slavery conditions, is to eliminate an extremely useful word from the vocabulary, a word that in my experience has never once caused pain among my many Asian and Asian-American friends.

I think you should keep your reference and, until I see something more than a Wikipedia entry, I plan to keep the word in my vocabulary. I'm not trying to be insensitive, but I just don't see enough evidence that this is one of those words that can cause pain to some who hear it when used in its proper context.

yes, but . . .

for years I volunteered in South (read "black") Dallas - once even being elected president of an all-black grass-roots organization. There I saw how hyper-sensitive some were to even the most remote whiff of attitude.

Same for some of my Mexican and Mexican-American relatives when I got married in Mexico.

Even now that I have been married to a Jewish wife for 35 years, I'm still needing to remind myself of the similar sensitivities among my Jewish friends and relatives (for starters, even the word "Jew" is offensive to some Jewish people when the word is uttered by a person who is not Jewish).

With so many people already hurting all around the world from lost jobs, and even those who still have jobs experiencing considerable fear, with even China and the other Far-East economies slowing, seems to me better to err on the side of caution. Emotions are running raw in so many places . . . that's why I accepted Mr. Cline's suggestion so readily.

Kodak Loses Third Director in a Week

I saw this coming when digital cameras were the RAVE!!!

Funnily enough, Kodak hit the market with one of the first consumer digital cameras way back in the early 80's. It recorded on Sony's little 2.5" floppy diskettes* and could store 50 "hi-res" pictures on a disk. I think back then hi-res implied something getting close to 0.1MP.

Sony's own attempt a few years later used standard 3.5" floppies, took worse quality (even though higher resolution) pictures, fit fewer on a disk, and was a clunky giant in comparison to the Kodak.


*Yet another example a Sony superior but proprietary format that was doomed to failure.

I have one of those Sony cameras and set it for 2272 x 2272 fine resolution and get 100 pictures per disc roughly. The quality is beyond HD.
JJK

Obviously you have a much newer model. I'm guessing yours must have been the mini-CD-R version.

$dayjob and several relatives bought some of the original ones and they were 640x480 and only fit maybe 20 pictures on a floppy. You couldn't fit even one decent quality 2272x2272 picture on a 1.4MB disk.

So...should I NOT buy a Kodak printer? REAL tired of printing where it's more economical to buy a new printer than buy new ink.