Company that pioneered the digital camera eventually brought down by its failure to invest in its own ground-breaking invention To all intents and purposes it is the end of the "Kodak moment". More than 130 years after a "not especially gifted" high school dropout, George Eastman, founded the camera company that dominated photography for most of the 20th century, Kodak Eastman filed for bankruptcy protection in the US on Thursday. The company which once sold 90 per cent of the film used in the US and made a type of film - Kodachrome - so beloved by amateur and professional photographers that Paul Simon wrote a hit song about it, finally succumbed to the digital revolution which left its products obsolete after years of ferocious competition from more light-footed rivals in the Far East. The company, whose little yellow film boxes could once be found throughout the world, had tried to reinvent itself as a manufacturer of printers to capitalise on its reputation as the best for film printing. But despite the closure of 13 factories, 130 processing labs and 47,000 job losses, the business had little choice but to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The filing lists its assets as worth $US5.1bn - but its debts stand at $US6.8bn.
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