Freelan O. Stanley and his twin brother Francis E. Stanley were born on 1 June 1849 in Kingsfield, Maine. Their parents were Solomon and Apphia (French) Stanley. Solomon Stanley was both a farmer and a teacher. Freelan and his brother Francis graduated from Farmington State Normal School in Farmington, Maine. The school is now the University of Maine at Farmington. Freelan became a teacher and taught at Andover, Lisbon and Farmington, Maine. He later became principal of the high school at Mechanic Falls, Maine. In 1876 he met and married Flora Tileston.
In 1885 he and his twin brother left their jobs and started a company to make photographic plates for photographers. they sold their shop four years later when they moved to Watertown, Massachusetts. They started another photographic plate business, but sold it to Eastman Kodak in 1904. The photographic plate business had made both brothers very wealthy.
In 1896 Freelan and his brother Francis visited the Brockton County Fair. They saw a steam car and decided to build one themselves. In 1897 the two brothers began making steam-powered cars. Their steam cars had a much lighter boiler and a lighter steam engine than the rest. They were soon making about 200 cars a year. In 1899 they purchased a bicycle factory in Watertown and began building their cars. They then sold their car company to John B. Walker and Amzi L. Barber for $250,000 USD. With it they sold the rights to their car designs. The sale had a clause that the two Stanley brothers could not build and sell cars for two years. The Stanley brothers broke the clause and had to give their new design to the company Walker and Barber formed, the Locomobile Company of America. In 1901 Francis and Freelan Stanley formed a new car company, the Stanley Motor Carriage Company.
The cars they produced, called Stanley Steamers, had many advantages. The cost was $650. That was $300 less than the cost of a Ford Model T. The cars were very quiet and only made hissing sounds from the boiler. They had no transmission because there was no need to change gears as there was with gasoline-powered cars. Their cars began making news. In 1899, Freelan and his wife Flora drove one of these cars to the top of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, the highest peak in the northeastern United States. The ascent took more than two hours and was notable as being the first time a car had climbed the long Mount Washington Carriage Road. In 1906 a Stanley Steamer broke the land speed record at 127 miles per hour on a beach in Florida.
In business, the twins looked exactly alike and dressed the same. They even trimmed their beards the same. People they worked with said the only way to tell them apart was each had a different reaction when you told him a joke. As other car companies moved from steam to gasoline power, their Stanley Steamer became the most popular steam powered car. As the internal combustion engine designs improved, however, steam and electric cars lost much of their popularity. Finally, the numbers of cars sold went down to less than 600 a year in 1918. That year the Stanley brothers sold the company to Prescott Warren, a Chicago businessman. both brothers retired. A few months later, while he was driving home from a trip to Maine, Francis' car ran off the road. Francis was driving a new 1918 Model 735 Stanley Steamer. He died in the accident, July 21, 1918.
In 1903 Freelan came down with tuberculosis and was given less than a year to live. He and his wife Flora came to Colorado to try to improve his health. The couple fell in love with Estes Park, Colorado. Stanley's health began to improve and in 1906 he began building a large hotel. The site had spectacular views of Rocky Mountain National Park. He opened his hotel in 1909. It had luxuries (for that time) of telephones, electricity and indoor plumbing. He had a fleet of Stanley Steamers to bring guests to his hotel, named The Stanley Hotel. The Stanley Hotel was the inspiration behind Stephen King's book "The Shining". King wrote much of the book while he was a guest in room 217. Other famous guests of the hotel include Theodore Roosevelt, Molly Brown and the Emperor of Japan.
Stanley made a number of contributions to Estes Park. He built a hydroelectric plant to provide electricity to the town. He gave land for parks, a fairground and he improved roads in the area. He spent every summer in Estes Park for 37 years. He died on October 2, 1940 at age 91.
Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company was started by George Eastman and Henry A. Strong in 1881. They made their headquarters in Rochester, New York. It began as the Eastman Dry plate company. The company made Photographic plates for Photographers. It changed from a partnership to a corporation in 1884. In 1888 it changed its name again to the Eastman Kodak Company. This is when they released their first hand-held camera called the Kodak. It used a roll of photographic film which the company had started making in 1885. It was a camera simple enough for anyone to take pictures. Eastman Kodak re-invented photography and became an American success story. But their success would not last.
At first photographers used glass plates they had to coat with an emulsion. But they had to be used within minutes of being coated. They also had to be processed into a picture right away. In 1878, Eastman successfully created dry plates that could be coated with a gelatin solution. These could be used at the photographer's convenience. They did not require all the heavy equipment wet plates did. Eastman decided to go into business selling them. He invented a machine to mass-produce dry plates. In 1888, the company sold the first Kodak box cameras. The slogan was "you press the button, we do the rest". For $24 USD the camera came already loaded with film capable of taking 100 pictures. The camera was sent back to the factory where for $10 the film was developed into pictures. These cameras first used paper film but later turned to Nitrocellulose film. An indexing roller to hold film was invented by David Houston. It had square holes in the edge of the film to advance the film with no waste or Multiple exposures. But Eastman did not want to pay to license his patent. So they bought his patent in 1899. Kodak kept making dry plates until that market dried up. Their main profit was in film and film developing papers and chemicals. They made film for the movie industry, 16mm film for hobby filmmaking and cameras of all kinds. In the mid- 1920s they came out with color film. In 1929 Kodak created motion picture film for adding sound to motion pictures.
In 1947 Edward Land invented the Polaroid instant camera. The camera could develop its own pictures inside the camera in 60 seconds. Within five years Polaroid sold over a million cameras. Kodak took notice. Since Kodak held 80% of the market for photographic development, instant cameras were a real threat. Kodak quickly came out with their own instant camera. Land sued Kodak for $12 billion for using its technology. In 1990 Land won and Kodak quit making instant cameras. But they won only a fraction of what they said Kodak's action had cost them, and Land went out of business in 2001.
Fujifilm, the Japanese photography company, began selling inexpensive film in the United States in the 1980s. Since their film cost much less than Kodak's, by 1999 they had a large share of the film market. Kodak lost millions of dollars and had many layoffs. When Digital cameras became popular, Kodak quickly joined that market. By 1999 they were the second largest maker of digital cameras. But they lost $60 on each one they sold.