In the news today was Eastman Kodak Corporation filing for bankruptcy.  Probably the biggest industry in Rochester New York.  Pat and I visited Rochester once and the factories were huge and the museum of the 130 year old company was very interesting.  By the way did you know that George Eastman, the founder of the company, and a life time bachelor, committed suicide after hosting a party?  If you visit the museum they have a small displayin the basement with the gun he used to shoot himself.

Still this is an interesting story in the life of a corporation.  Having invented consumer cameras, they made billions on controlling film and camera designs.  Kodak actually produced the first digital cameras, a technology that eventually destroyed this huge company.  They controlled distribution and processing of film and sales of cameras but forgot what was the core of their industry.  They subcontracted the lenses and eventually the camera bodies and, in the worst step, the electronics that went into digital cameras.  So subcontractors like Canon and Nikon eventually blew them away. 

Kodak thought that digital would be good for trivial pictures but the full chemical exposure would always dominate.  Big mistake.

Reminds me of the story of where IBM went from absolute control of computers to an also ran.  They chose to outsource the core chip to a little company called Intel and let another little company called Microsoft develop the basic software.  Today these subcontractors blow away IBM because, like Kodak, they forgot what is the essence of their business.  IBM thought that as they had the distribution and the brand they could control sales.  The very concept of Dell selling computers through the internet or by phone without stores, never occured to them.

Still, sad for Rochester, a nice town, but then the US is filled with cities that depended on corporations only to be passed by. 

Yes you are correct, I write this as Pat cleans up after dinner.  A nice meal of leftovers from the dinner party last night.