RT Journal Article T1 Festschrift: experimenting with research: Kenneth Mees, Eastman Kodak and the challenges of diversification A1 Jeffrey Sturchio YR 2020 VO IS Spring 2020 K1 Carl Duisberg K1 Charles Edward Kenneth Mees K1 digital photography K1 Eastman Kodak Company K1 Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories K1 George Eastman K1 Industrial R&D K1 Polaroid K1 Robert Bud K1 silver halide photography K1 Xerox AB Early industrial research laboratories were closely tied to the needs of business, a point that emerges strikingly in the case of Eastman Kodak, where the principles laid down by George Eastman and Kenneth Mees before the First World War continued to govern research until well after the Second World War. But industrial research is also a gamble involving decisions over which projects should be pursued and which should be dropped. Ultimately Kodak evolved a conservative management culture, one that responded sluggishly to new opportunities and failed to adapt rapidly enough to market realities. In a classic case of the ‘innovator’s dilemma’, Kodak continued to bet on its dominance in an increasingly outmoded technology, with disastrous consequences. NO See, for example, the 1985 R&D Scoreboard in Business Week, which shows the four ‘pioneers’ in the top ten in overall spending, with AT&T in third, Du Pont in fifth, General Electric in sixth, and Eastman Kodak in eighth place. Business Week, 8 July 1985: 87. For a report of the R&D Pioneers conference at which an earlier version of this paper was presented, see John K Smith, ‘R&D Pioneers Conference – Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, Delaware, October 7, 1985’, in Technology & Culture 28 (April 1987): 340–342. NO C E Kenneth Mees to Charles Singer, 1 January 1958, and Mees to Singer, 28 January 1958. Mees File, Historical/ Biographical Reference Files, Eastman Kodak Company Archives (hereafter Mees, EKCoA – but see note below on current location of these files). At the time I did research on this paper (1985), these records were administered by the Business Information Center at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York. I thank M Lois Gauch and her staff for their assistance in using these materials. Walter Cooper and Roger Cole, then with the Kodak Research Laboratories, were also instrumental in facilitating my research in Rochester. Since I conducted my research, these materials were donated by Kodak to the University of Rochester Libraries in 2004 and 2006, where they can now be consulted as the Kodak Historical Collection #003, D.319, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries. For the finding aid, see https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/finding-aids/D319#processinfo Two relevant books that appeared after I completed the original version of this paper in 1985 are Eastman Kodak Research Laboratories, Journey: 75 Years of Kodak Research (Rochester, NY: Eastman Kodak Company, 1990), and Douglas Collins, The Story of Kodak (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990). See also Nicolas Le Guern’s doctoral dissertation, Contribution of the European Kodak Research Laboratories to Innovation Strategy at Eastman Kodak (Leicester: De Montfort University, 2017). NO David A Hounshell, ‘The evolution of industrial research in the United States’, in Richard S Rosenbloom and William J Spencer (eds), Engines of Innovation: US Industrial Research at the End of an Era (Boston, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School Press, 1996). Since the 1980s, there has been considerable additional scholarship on the history of industrial research and applied science. An extended historiographic review is beyond the scope of this essay, but two of the most interesting books that draw on this literature are Sally H Clarke, Naomi R Lamoreaux and Steven W Usselman (eds), The Challenge of Remaining Innovative: Insights from Twentieth-Century American Business (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); and Steven Shapin, The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Robert F Bud has made significant contributions to scholarly work in this area. One of his earliest publications looks at the influence of industrial research models on cancer research: ‘Strategy in American cancer research after World War II: a case study’, Social Studies of Science, 8 (1978): 425–459. See also his books on The Uses of Life: A History of Biotechnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); and his recent articles, including ‘“Applied science”: a phrase in search of a meaning’, Isis 103 (2012): 537–545; ‘Framed in the public sphere: tools for the conceptual history of “applied science” – a review paper’, History of Science, 51 (2013): 413–433; and ‘Modernity and the ambivalent significance of applied science: motors, wireless, telephones and poison gas’, in Robert F Bud, et al (eds), Being modern: the cultural impact of science in the early 20th century (London: UCL Press, 2018): 95–129. NO See especially Alfred D Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1977); Louis Galambos, ‘The American Economy and the Reorganization of the Sources of Knowledge’, in Alexandra Oleson and John Voss (eds), The Organization of Knowledge in America, 1860–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); David A Hounshell and John K Smith, Science and Corporate Strategy: DuPont R&D, 1902–1980 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Stuart W Leslie, Boss Kettering (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Reese Jenkins, Images and Enterprise: Technology and the American Photographic Industry, 1839 to 1925 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975); Leonard S Reich, American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876–1926 (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and George Wise, Willis Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of Industrial Research (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). NO The following paragraphs on early innovation at Kodak draw on the detailed account in Jenkins, Images and Enterprise (note 4): 71–72, 82–84, 96–120, 127–133, 145–154, 179–187, 223–224, 242–243, and 300–305. See also Jenkins, ‘Technology and the Market: George Eastman and the Origins of Mass Amateur Photography’, Technology and Culture,16 (1975): 1–19. NO See ‘Slow Profits Today, But Sure Profits Tomorrow’, an interview by Samuel Crowther with George Eastman, System: The Magazine of Business, 38 (October, 1920): 607–610, 704 et seq.; at 706, 708. NO This and the following paragraphs are based on two sources: interview with C E Kenneth Mees by R S Johansson and Linda Allardt, 24 April 1952. Mees, EKCoA; and C E Kenneth Mees, [Recollections of Mr Eastman], pp 1–5, George Eastman Legacy Collection, George Eastman Museum, copy in George Eastman Papers, Box 9.12, Rush Rhees Library, Rare Books, Special Collections & Preservation, University of Rochester. https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/sites/default/files/atoms/files/Mees.pdf NO There is abundant biographical material on Mees. Among his autobiographical writings, see Mees, ‘Fifty Years of Photographic Research’, Journal of the Franklin Institute, 258 (1954): 497–500; ‘An Address to the Senior Staff of the Kodak Research Laboratories, November 9, 1955’ (Rochester: Kodak Research Laboratories, 1956); and From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film: A Story of Photographic Research (New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., 1961). Among the most useful of the many biographical accounts are Aubrey D McFadyen, ‘An American Contemporary: Charles Edward Kenneth Mees’, Chemical & Engineering News, 25 (1947): 3494, 3544; E R Davies, ‘Dr. C. E. Kenneth Mees, F.R.S.’, Nature, 188 (1960): 18–19; Walter Clark, ‘Charles Edward Kenneth Mees, 1882–1960’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 7 (1961): 173–197 (including an extensive bibliography of Mees’s publications); Hans T Clarke, ‘Charles Edward Kenneth Mees, 1882–1960’, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1971): 175–199; and T H James, A Biography-Autobiography of Charles Edward Kenneth Mees, Pioneer of Industrial Research (Rochester, New York: Photographic Research Laboratories, Eastman Kodak Company, 1990). NO Eastman’s remarks from 1952 Mees interview (note 7). See also Mees, 'Address to the Senior Staff' (note 8), 23–24. NO Eastman as ‘crazy about color’ is quoted in Elizabeth Brayer, George Eastman: A Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 221. For Eastman’s assessment of Mees, see Carl W Ackerman, George Eastman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930; reprinted Clifton, NJ: Augustus M Kelley, 1973), 240. The Brandeis anecdote comes from Mees, ‘Autobiographical Notes’, n.d ., typescript in Mees, EKCoA. For Eastman’s concerns about anti-trust matters before 1920 and a survey of early anti-trust litigation against Eastman Kodak, see Ackerman, George Eastman, 248–281 (for 1911–1912 specifically, see 248–253); and Jenkins, Images and Enterprise (note 4), 318–321. NO Wyatt Brummitt, The Story of Kodak, typescript history in EKCoA, n.d. [ca. 1960], chapter on ‘Photography–Kodak–and Research’ (for Eastman quotation). George Eastman to C E Kenneth Mees, 5 February 1912 (agreement on publications of results); ‘Memorandum of Agreement between Eastman Kodak Company and C E Kenneth Mees’, 1 February 1912 (notarised in Rochester 2 April 1912); [CEK M], ‘Estimate for Apparatus for Building No. 3’, holograph notes, n.d .; [CEK M], ‘Estimate of Cost of Plant & Fitting for New Lab.’, holograph notes, n.d.; [CEK M], ‘Report of Visit to Research Laboratory of General Electric Company’, [April 1912], all in Mees, EKCoA. Mees’s comment on not knowing how to run a laboratory is from ‘Address to the Senior Staff’ (note 6), quoted in Shapin, Scientific Life (note 3), 157. Whitney wrote to Frank Lovejoy on 5 October 1912 with some observations on his principles of research management, noting that ‘I dread organization and system so much that I want to warn others from spending too much time and effort on it’ and that ‘it is not safe to assume that we are indispensable to the Company. Mees eventually took both observations to heart; see Wise, Willis Whitney (note 4), 179–180. See also Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film (note 8), 41–42. NO The Mees quotation is from Mees interview (note 7); the Out of the Fog anecdote is from Clark, ‘Mees’ (note 8), 184. The first published account of the Kodak Research Laboratories was [CEK M], ‘A New Laboratory for Research in Optics and Photography’, Scientific American Supplement 76 (26 July 1913): 56–57. The early work of the laboratories may be followed in Mees’s annual reports to Eastman for 1913–1915 and 1917–1918 in Mees, EKCoA. For early reviews of the scientific work of the laboratories, see Mees’s articles on ‘The Physical Chemistry of Photographic Development’, Journal of the American Chemical Society 35 (1913): 1727–1732; ‘The Physics of the Photographic Process’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 139 (1915): 141–160; ‘A Photographic Research Laboratory’, Scientific Monthly 5 (1917): 481–496; ‘The Structure of the Photographic Image’, Journal of the Franklin Institute 191 (1921): 631–650; and ‘Recent Advances in Photographic Theory’, ibid. 195 (1923): 1–21. On the early growth of the Laboratories, see also Mees, ‘The Kodak Research Laboratories’, Proceedings of the Royal Society Al92 (1948): 465–479; Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film (note 8), 43–58; Edwin A Hunger, ‘Experiment and Work of an Industrial Research Laboratory’, Industrial Management 53 (1917): 371–379; Walter Clark, ‘Growth of an American Industry Around a Major Product: Eastman Kodak Company’, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, 31 (1939): 507–514; Reese Jenkins, Images and Enterprise (note 4), 305–318; and Clark, ‘When Industrial Research Was Young’, Research Management 24 (July 1981): 9–16. NO Graham Mees to Wyatt Brummitt, 4 October 1965, in Mees, EKCoA; C E Kenneth Mees, ‘The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research’, Science, 43 (1916): 763–773; Mees, The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research (New York: McGraw­Hill, 1920). Mees’s other articles on the subject included ‘The Production of Scientific Knowledge’, Science, 46 (1917): 519–528; ‘A Photographic Research Laboratory’ (note 12); and ‘Planning a Research Laboratory for an Industry’, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 10 (1918): 476–480. When his book appeared in 1920, it was favourably reviewed in Nature and Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, but the most interesting notice was one in The New Republic, which viewed Mees and his colleagues as part of the scientific management movement that had already ‘brought clarity and improved control in the fields of salesmanship, accounting, personnel administration, production planning and scheduling’. The reviewer (‘O. T.’) also stressed the important value of research ‘not only in the individual corporation but to the whole consuming world’. The New Republic, 23 (28 July 1920): 260–261. NO Mees, ‘Organization of Industrial Scientific Research’, Science (note 13), 767 NO For background information on Clarke, Malm and Weissberger, see their files in Biographical/Historical Files, EKCoA; and H T Clarke, ‘Impressions of an Organic Chemist in Biochemistry’, Annual Review of Biochemistry, 27 (1958): 1–14. On Huggins, see his autobiographical sketch in R D Ulrich, (ed), Macromolecular Science: Retrospect and Prospect, Contemporary Topics in Polymer Science, Vol. 1 (New York: Plenum Press, 1978), 99–111; and Walter H Stockmayer, ‘Maurice L. Huggins on his 80th Birthday’, Macromolecules, 10 (1977): 5A–6A NO C E K Mees, ‘Research and Business with Some Observations on Color Photography’, Vital Speeches of the Day, 2 (18 November 1935): 117–120; at 119–120; see also Mees, ‘Scope of Research Management’, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 24 (1932): 65–66; and Mees, ‘Kodak Research Laboratories’ (note 12), 477–478. Mees’s attitude toward over-organisation was no doubt influenced by Eastman’s strong feelings on the matter; see Eastman, ‘Slow Profits’ (note 6), 716. NO C E Kenneth Mees to E R Davies, 2 April 1956, Mees, EKCoA. See also Mees, ‘Organization of Industrial Scientific Research’, Science (note 13), 768–769; Organization of Industrial Scientific Research (note 13), 95–98; Mees to Eastman, 26 January 1920 (Mees, EKCoA); ‘Report on the Functions of a Research Laboratory in an Industry’, 15 December 1920 (Mees, EKCoA); ‘The Relation of Research to Industrial Finance’, 16 October 1947 (Mees, EKCoA); and ‘Abstract of Cost Accounting and the Research Department’, 21 April 1948 (Mees, EKCoA). NO Mees, ‘Organization of Industrial Scientific Research’, Science (note 13), 770 (conferences), 771–772 (importance of publications); Organization of Industrial Scientific Research (1920), 122–127 (conference system), 142–144 (publications policy). NO For information on the conference system and research administration at Kodak since the Second World War, I thank John R Thirtle (former Technical Assistant to the Director of the Color Photography Division of the Kodak Research Laboratories) for several illuminating conversations. See also Mees and John Leermakers, The Organization of Industrial Scientific Research (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950), 269–271. NO On Tennessee Eastman and related work at the Kodak Research Laboratories, see Howard Long, Kingsport: The Romance of an Industry (Kingsport, Tennessee: Sevier Press, 1928), 223–239; Portrait of Tennessee Eastman Corporation, n.p., n.d. [1949], copy in EKCoA; Williams Haynes, American Chemical Industry: A History, 6 vols. (New York: D. van Nostrand, 1945–1954), III, 136–138; IV, 29; v, 203–204, 331–332, 374–375; Wyatt Brummitt, ‘Story of Kodak’ (note 11), Vol. III, chapter on ‘Creative Chemistry’ (EKCoA); and Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film (note 8), 141–147. NO C E K Mees, ‘The Supply of Organic Reagents’, Science, 48 (1918): 91–92; Mees, ‘Chemicals for Research Work’, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 10 (1918): 1027; Eastman Kodak Company, Price List. Eastman Organic Chemicals, January 1919, March 1919, copies in Chemicals folder, Kodak Products file, EKCoA; H T Clarke, ‘The Preparation of Pure Organic Chemicals’, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 11 (1919): 475; Mees, ‘Report on the Production of Synthetic Organic Chemicals in the Research Laboratory of the Eastman Kodak Company for. the Year 1918–1919’, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 11 (1919): 1141–1142; Mees and Clarke, ‘The Preparation of Synthetic Organic Chemicals at Rochester’, 1921, copy in Chemicals folder, Kodak Products file, EKCoA; and H T Clarke, ‘Rare Organic Chemicals’, ibid, 14 (1922): 836–837. See also Ackerman, George Eastman (note 10), 316–319; Arthur B Corey, ‘Organic Research Chemicals’, Chemical Industries, 48 (1941): 194–196; Haynes, American Chemical Industry: A History (note 20), III, 345–349; ‘Purveyors of Exotic Organics’, Chemical & Engineering News, 36 (7 July 1958): 56–58; Clarke, ‘Impressions of an Organic Chemist’ (note 15); and Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film (note 8), 285–287. Kodak’s move into organic chemical manufactures was based on efforts begun at the University of Illinois in 1916 by Clarence Derick and later run by Roger Adams, who knew both Mees and Clarke through the American Chemical Society; see Roger Adams, ‘The Manufacture of Organic Chemicals at the University of Illinois’, Science, 47 (1918): 226–228; D Stanley and Ann Tracy Tarbell, Roger Adams: Scientist and Statesman (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1981), 52–57; and P Thomas Carroll, ‘Academic Chemistry in America, 1876–1976: Diversification, Growth, and Change’ (PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1982): 203–207. NO On Hickman and Distillation Products, see Hickman’s file in Historical/Biographic Files, EKCoA; K C D Hickman, ‘Molecular Distillation: Apparatus and Methods’, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 29 (1937): 968–975; Hickman, ‘Molecular Distillation: State of the Vitamins in Certain Fish Liver Oils’, ibid., 1107–1111; Hickman and E LeB Gray, ‘Molecular Distillation: Examination of Natural Vitamin D’, ibid., 30 (1938): 796–802; Graham C Mees, ‘History of Distillation Products Industries’, Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society, 36 (December 1959): 4; and C E K Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film (note 8), 291–292. NO Mees, ‘Report on the Functions of a Research Laboratory in an Industry’, 15 December 1920, p 6 (Mees , EKCoA); and Mees to Eastman, 26 January 1920 (Mees, EKCoA). For a review of interwar research on cinematography, colour photography, X-rays, and documentary photography, see Mees, From Dry Plates to Ektachrome Film (note 8), 119–126, 151–158, 169–254. NO See ‘The Polyethylene Gamble’, Fortune, (February 1954): 135–137, 166, et seq; ‘Eastman Kodak Enlarged’, Fortune, 50 (July 1954): 72–76, 151–154. For representative breakdowns of sales by Kodak product areas, see Eastman Kodak Company, 1954, Annual Report, 10; Eastman Kodak Company, Annual Report for 1960, x. NO The following paragraphs draw in part on perspectives from the following articles: ‘Eastman Kodak Enlarged’ (note 24); Robert Sheehan, ‘Kodak Picture – Sunshine and Shadow’, Fortune, 71 (May 1965): 127–129, 152, et seq.; Philip Siekman, ‘Kodak and Polaroid: An End of Peaceful Coexistence’, Fortune 82 (1970); and Subrata N Chakravarty and Ruth Simon, ‘Has the World Passed Kodak By?’, Forbes, 134 (5 November 1984): 184–192. Elizabeth Brayer reports that Kodak ‘could have fathered xerography as well as photography. But through Dr C E Kenneth Mees, who was essentially a chemical man, Kodak consistently turned down Chester Carlson’s dry photographic process, basically a physics operation’; Brayer, George Eastman (note 10), 607. On the competition with Polaroid, see Mark Olshaker, The Instant Image Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience (New York: Stein and Day, 1978), esp. 220–234; and Ronald K Fierstein, A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid and the Kodak Patent War (Chicago: Ankerwycke Publishing, 2015). NO For information on Staud, Leermakers and Hanson, see their files in Biographical/Historical Files, EKCoA. NO C E Kenneth Mees to E R Davies, 11 February 1959, Mees, EKCoA NO Eastman Kodak Company, 1984 Annual Report, esp. 2, 4–8, 26, 44–45. Quotation from p 2. For more background on Kodak’s increasing struggles in the post-1980 period, see Alecia Swasy, Changing Focus: Kodak and the Battle to Save a Great American Company (New York: Crown Business, 1997); John J Larish, Out of Focus: The Story of How Kodak Lost Its Direction (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012); K Bradley Paxton, Pictures, Pop Bottles and Pills: Kodak Electronic Technology That Made a Better World But Didn’t Save the Day (Rochester, New York: Fossil Press, 2013); and Paul Snyder, Is This Something that George Eastman Would Have Done? The Decline and Fall of Eastman Kodak Company, 2nd & revised edition (Scotts Valley, California: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016) NO Clayton M Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 1997) NO This section draws on Willy Shih, ‘The Real Lessons from Kodak’s Decline’, Sloan Management Review, summer 2016, 1–13; Vincent P Barabba, The Decision Loom: A Design for Interactive Decision-making in Organizations (Axminster: Triarchy Press, 2011), 69–76 (Barabba was the Kodak executive who led the 1981 study on the digital future); Paul B Carroll and Chunka Mui, Billion-Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years (New York: Portfolio, 2008), 88–106. For Sasson’s work on the digital camera, see James Estrin, ‘Kodak’s First Digital Moment’, New York Times, 12 August 2015 https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/kodaks-first-digital-moment/?smid=pl-share. On Xerox missing the boat on the personal computer, see Douglas K Smith and Robert C Alexander, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the Personal Computer (Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse, 1999). NO C E Kenneth Mees, [Recollections of Mr. Eastman], (note 7): 10 https://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/sites/default/files/atoms/files/Mees.pdf PB The Science Museum Group SN 2054-5770 LA eng DO 10.15180/201311 UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/kenneth-mees-eastman-kodak/ WT Science Museum Group Journal OL 30