"The Big Yellow Box" was a nickname given to Kodak by its employees. When my family moved to Rochester, New York, from Canada in November 1962, we bought a house in the 10th Ward, which was surrounded by Kodak Park on three sides. My high school, John Marshall High School, was a stone's throw from Kodak Park. By 2000, Kodak Park had grown in size to be the world's third-largest industrial park. Indeed, since 1962, until about 2000, the expansion I witnessed of Kodak Park was breathtaking, and included a separate large new section several miles west of the main park. Following their fathers, most of my friends ended up working at Kodak. For decades, March was Kodak bonus time for its employees, with a typical blue-collar Kodaker in the 1960s taking home a bonus of $2500 to $4000, enough to buy a decent new car!

"Open Me First" was a Kodak advertising slogan for many years, which encouraged families the world over to open their Christmas presents of Kodak still and movie cameras to be ready to capture "The Times of Your Life." It seemed that photographic film cameras and film sales would keep expanding into the future, but that, however, was not to be. Around 1975, Kodak research had developed the first digital camera, but shelved the design and medium as the company was heavily invested in film. Alas, other photo companies, such as Canon and Nikon, had taken their digital photo research and marketed their digital cameras. Kodak eventually joined the digital photo revolution with its camera, but instead of being the front-runner, it was just another competitive design.

Kodak employment in the Rochester, New York region reached a zenith of 62,000 employees in 1992, but steadily decreased from that time on. As film sales fell, Kodak began demolishing buildings in Kodak Park to lessen its tax burden. Much of its remaining building space was leased to other companies. With its ongoing production of movie film for the movie industry and a renewed public interest in film photography, Kodak has survived and seen increasing sales in recent years. Will Kodak ever be the photo and technological giant it once was? Likely not, but it may surprise us with its resilience by developing innovative ideas and products that translate into future growth for the company.