 When I was 10 years old, my mother gave me an old Kodak brownie camera. I was disappointed because it looked like a box with a hole in it. I didn't realize how this simple box revolutionized photography. Did it change the way American families think of themselves and recall their own histories? The brownie camera was the brainchild of George Eastman. In 1871, this 17-year-old bank clerk took up photography. It wasn't a simple thing in those days. In Eastman's own words, it took a pack-horse load of equipment, including a sink because making photos was messy business. It involved coating glass plates with egg whites. His first step was to get rid of the sink to make the process dry. Eastman worked in his mother's kitchen to make dry plates, even boiling his chemicals in her teapot. He went into business as the Eastman Dry Plate Company. Eastman found he could make money from his plates, but only if there existed a small, simple camera to use them. This started him on a 20-year quest. His first camera in 1885 included a key feature, a roll of film. Eastman took coatings from his dry glass plates and transferred it to flexible paper. Although it was now inconvenient to take pictures, it cost $45 for the camera and exorbitant price in 1885. Over the next three years, Eastman improved his camera, but it still cost $25, again too much, although it carried for the first time one of the greatest trademark names ever. To name the camera, Eastman looked for a simple word that could be pronounced in every language. Eastman's favorite letter was K. He said it was strong, incisive, firm, and unyielding. From this feeling, he conjured up Kodak. With profits from these cameras, Eastman spent 10 more years perfecting his ultimate camera, the brownie. It sold for $1.15 for film. In its first year, 1,900, 5,000 of them flew off the shelves, spreading across the globe. In 1904, for example, when the Dalai Lama came down from his Tibetan capital for the first time, he brought with him his Kodak camera. In spite of the success of the brownie, Eastman continued creating new cameras until he got a painful spinal condition that made him inactive. Always the man of action, Eastman made a plan. He tidied up his will, then asked his doctor to show him exactly where his heart was. In 1932, George Eastman shot himself through the heart, looking behind a yellow-lined piece of paper with the words, To my friends, my work is done, why wait? And what work that was. This year alone, Americans will take 70 billion photos, not simply photographs, but memories to be shared for years, all started by George Eastman and his brownie camera.