Inventing a method of making dry plates, he began to manufacture them in a small way as early as 1880.

After the first kodak, there came others filled with rolls of sensitized nitro-cellulose film.

Priority in the invention of the cellulose film, instead of glass, which has revolutionized photography, has been decided by the courts to belong to the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin, but the honor none the less belongs to Eastman, who independently worked out his process and gave photography to the millions.

The introduction by the Eastman Kodak Company of a film cartridge which could be inserted or removed without retiring to a dark room removed the chief difficulty in the way of amateurs, and a camera of some sort, varying in price from a dollar or two to as many hundreds, is today an indispensable part of a vacation equipment.
In the development of the animated pictures Thomas Alva Edison has played a large part.

Many were the efforts to give the appearance of movement to pictures before the first real entertainment was staged by Henry Heyl of Philadelphia.