Somebody has put up a bunch of those oh-so-inspirational quotes where business leaders said something really stupid. I’m not sure how these are supposed to inspire us, especially since almost all of them are urban legends. One of them I walk by every day says
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.”
— William Orton, president of Western Union, in 1876
I’m trying to figure out the clip art they used for a banner on the quote, because I really want to replace it with
“These digital cameras are a fad. People will always want the quality that they can only get with film”
— Any Kodak executive from 1975 to about 2005
Kodak stopped saying that in 2005? What, did they go out of business and I missed that?
I used “2005” as approximately when the last non-Chinese film plant closed down.
Didn’t know that. I was talking tonight about how film is one of the technologies I’ve seen going obsolete in my own time.
That’s rather ironic. I had the opportunity to use a Nikon body fitted out with a prototype digital backplane made by Kodak in 1997 or so when I was at the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing. It was owned by Kodak and had serial number “001”. We were evaluating it for use in an aerial photography application, but I also recall it took very nice pictures of the tulips at Dow’s Lake.
I seem to recall it also had the ability to record short sound bites. Kodak wanted some hideous amount of money for a deposit for the equipment.
Gord, that was probably the fore-runner of the Kodak Pro14N, which was a pretty amazing camera (Nikon body, 14 megapixel sensor that is the same size as a 35mm negative) after they brought out the second edition with the non-sucky sensor and software. Unfortunately by then everybody who was in the target market had heard from somebody who paid $14,000 for the first, incredibly sucky, one.