Roll Film
George Eastman, USA, patents of 1884-85. Flexible film that put photography in everyone's hands.
Overview
Eastman patented paper-backed then nitrocellulose roll film, freeing cameras from single glass plates. The 1888 Kodak, you press the button, we do the rest, mailed whole cameras back for processing. Roll film made the Brownie's one-dollar democratization possible in 1900. It also enabled cinema: Lumiere and Edison film ran on flexible stock. Eastman's patent-built fortune funded Rochester and MIT's campus. Flexible film was the gateway drug of imaging for a century.
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