Kodak’s first camera arrived in 1888
While police in London were searching for Jack the Ripper, George Eastman’s photographic business was bringing a new kind of camera to market in the United States. The Kodak camera appeared in 1888, the same year as the notorious Whitechapel murders and the investigation that followed.
Eastman’s business was not yet the corporate giant people know today. It had grown out of his earlier photographic-supply company, founded in 1881; the Eastman Kodak Company took its later corporate form in 1892. So the overlap is real, but it is the early Kodak enterprise—not the fully developed modern corporation—that belongs in 1888.
Making photography easier to use
Before Kodak, taking photographs generally meant handling more demanding equipment and photographic materials. Eastman’s camera used a roll of flexible film, allowing many exposures without replacing a glass plate after each picture. Customers sent the camera back to have the film processed and the prints made, then received the camera reloaded for another round.
That arrangement shifted much of photography’s technical work away from the person taking the picture. A customer could point the camera and take photographs without mastering the entire developing process—a change that helped make casual, everyday photography more practical.
Two very different stories in one year
The Ripper investigation became a defining episode in London’s history; Kodak’s launch was an early step in the spread of photography to a broader public. There is no need to imagine the camera playing a part in the hunt: the striking connection is simply that, in 1888, an enduring name in consumer technology was beginning its life while Victorian London grappled with a crime that still fascinates readers.
