George Eastman

George Eastman, who lived from 12 July 1854 to 14 March 1932, was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped bring photographic roll film into the mainstream, patenting and selling a roll film camera after a decade of experiments that made amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time; as treasurer and later president of Kodak he oversaw the company's expansion alongside that of the film industry as a whole. A major philanthropist, he established the Eastman School of Music and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, funded schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and the Eastman Dental Hospital at University College London, made large contributions to the Rochester Institute of Technology and to the construction of buildings at MIT's second campus on the Charles River, supported the historically Black Tuskegee University and Hampton University, and funded clinics for low income residents in London and other European cities. In his final two years Eastman suffered intense pain from a disorder affecting his spine, and on 14 March 1932 he died by suicide, leaving a note that read, To my friends, my work is done, why wait; he is remembered as one of the most influential residents of Rochester, New York, and the George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark.