Born in Waterville, New York, George Eastman quit school at the age of fourteen to help support his family, working first as a messenger for an insurance company and then as a bank clerk. In l878 as he planned a vacation, a friend suggested he take along a camera. Eastman took the suggestion to heart, equipping himself with the paraphernalia then required in the wet-plate process of photography: a sizable camera, a heavy tripod, a plate holder and a number of the fragile and cumbersome glass plates, and the developing necessities, among them chemicals and a portable tent-like darkroom--a "packhorse load," as Eastman himself called it. That firsthand encounter with the complexities and inconvenience of the photographic method of the day launched Eastman on his quest to simplify the process and make it accessible and enjoyable to the general public.

Eastman learned soon after that an English photographer...