Kodak manufacturing inefficiency in monopoly era (mid-1990s)

Kodak Park tour: stainless-steel custom conveyors and elevators built rather than purchased, because Kodak was "printing money" and needed to spend it before showing too much profit attracted antitrust scrutiny. Building Six = Eastman Building. (Sidenote: Eastman bailed MIT out of bankruptcy in 1917.)

I had some students do theses at Kodak, and I remember going to Kodak Park and taking a tour. Kodak Park was built by George Eastman, founder of Kodak — Building Six is the Eastman Building. He got MIT out of bankruptcy in 1917. George Eastman built Kodak Park as a manufacturing facility back in the 1910s and 1920s. It wasn't laid out the way we would lay it out today, so they had a loading dock and stuff would come in, and they had to move boxes about a half floor up. Instead of going out and buying some conveyor tables to move the boxes and a little elevator to move them up to the next level, Kodak designed and built — out of stainless steel, not carbon steel — their own conveyors and elevators, because they were used to keeping full employment. They were basically printing money. They called it film, but it was printing money. They had no real competition. The people at Kodak just burned through money, because if they showed they were too profitable, the government would get upset and come in and break up the monopoly. So they just burned through money like water. And then when they did get competition, these great American businessmen didn't know what to do, so they kept burning through money.