A 24-year-old built the future. Kodak executives told him to hide it for 25 years.

Happy Monday!

Curse and Coffee friends,

Today, we explore how Kodak hid its invention of the digital camera.

Hit reply and let us know what you think (we read all of your kind words).

Coffee at the ready…

The take: Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, then told the inventor to shut up about it until 2001.

What happened: A 24-year-old engineer named Steven Sasson built the world's first digital camera from scavenged parts. When he demoed it, executives didn't ask how it worked. They asked why anyone would want to take a picture this way, "when there was nothing wrong with conventional photography."

Why it matters: Kodak patented the technology, then shelved it to protect film profits. Thirty-seven years later, they filed for bankruptcy. The company that invented the future was killed by the people running it.

What to watch: Every boardroom where someone's pitching something that threatens the cash cow. This story never stops repeating.

The camera was painted blue because that's what colour paint was lying around. The decision to bury it was more deliberate.

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The specs are almost funny now.

The camera weighed 3.6kg, captured 100 × 100 pixels—0.01 megapixels—and took 23 seconds to save each image to a cassette tape.

Sasson built it from a junk-bin movie camera lens and 16 batteries. His supervisor gave him the project in a conversation that lasted less than a minute.

The word "digital" was never mentioned.

On December 9, 1975, they shot the first photo: black-and-white bars.

Then Sasson convinced a lab technician, Joy Marshall, to sit for a portrait. When her face appeared on the TV screen after a burst of static, she looked at it and said, "It needs work."

She wasn't wrong.

But Kodak's executives saw what it could become, and that terrified them.

At its peak, Kodak commanded 90% of the US film market and 85% of camera sales. Film wasn't just profitable. It was the entire business model.

Cannibalizing it for an unproven technology felt like madness.

So they patented it, silenced the inventor, and waited.

In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Pro: The camera genuinely wasn't ready. No personal computers existed. No market for digital photos. Kodak kept developing the technology internally and released a digital camera in 1991. They didn't ignore it, they managed it.

Con: Sasson built the first DSLR in 1989. Kodak declined to sell it. That's not managing innovation. That's strangling it to protect quarterly earnings.

Our read: Kodak had engineers who could see the future. It lacked executives willing to bet on it. The receipts say they knew. They just chose film anyway.

National Inventors Hall of Fame: Steven Sasson

"The most amazing thing about being at Kodak was that they paid me to do what I loved."

Why it matters: Sasson stayed at Kodak for 36 years. Retired in 2009. Obama awarded him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honour the US government bestows on engineers. Kodak filed for bankruptcy two years later.

$31 billion (1997) → bankrupt (2012). That's what protecting the status quo costs.

☕ IEEE Spectrum: The first digital camera — Sasson on photos today: "Photos have become the universal form of casual conversation." The man they silenced got to watch his invention change everything.

☕ Digital Camera World: Kodak kept this secret for 25 years — Fresh details on the prototype that no longer works because its wire-wrap connections were only meant for temporary use. Unlike film, apparently.

☕ TIME: Kodak bankruptcy — "They were a company stuck in time. Their history became a liability."

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For the love of coffee, see you tomorrow!

Enjoy your Monday, keep it caffeinated.

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