Wired tells the story of the origin of the celluloid film which is tied to patents.
In 1887 Hannibal Goodwin fileed a patent for celluloid film. Godwin was not an engineer but had decided to solve problem of holding photographic emulsion. In 1888 George Eastman introduced photographic film based on paper, which proved to be a bother. Therefore he gave his R&D people the job of creating something new….which in 1889 resulted in the same invention as Goodwin already was in the process of patenting. In 1890 the new product was marketed.
Goodwin died in 1900 and his widow sold his patent to a company which promptly sued Eastman Kodak (which the company was and is still called) for patent infringement…and won. The company was awarded 5 mill $ in 1914 which was a lot of money then. The patent expired in 1915 but the technology survived until digitalization took over.
