The Long Shadow of Kodak: Internationalizing Industrial R&D and Photographic Science

Through a case study on the Eastman Kodak Company, this article uncovers a long and multifaceted history of research and development (R&D) internationalization that began in the late nineteenth century. I examine Kodak’s reasons for forming photographic research laboratories in Britain, France, Australia, and Panama and explore its mechanisms for obtaining and transmitting proprietary knowledge and for shaping the internationalization of photographic science. My analysis demonstrates that, whereas Kodak’s R&D presence in Europe and Australasia was an almost natural corollary of its acquisition of manufacturing facilities in these regions, the company founded a Tropical Research Laboratory in Panama to investigate the impact of environmental conditions that were of commercial, military, and scientific interest and could not be properly simulated domestically. I also highlight the importance of corporate mergers and acquisitions and in-person travel to the transnational movement of knowledge on an uneven playing field, and suggest that Kodak played a significantly more conservative role in outward-facing initiatives in the applied discipline of photographic science than in its own in-house investigations.