Kodak

An original Kodak camera

The company we know as Kodak was once known as the Eastman Kodak company. Digital photography and video killed most of their business which ranged from the average consumer to the big Hollywood movie studios. The company is not a big player in either market these days, but it once ruled the American film and photography business.

George Eastman received a patent for the first film camera in 1888. Eastman had been an enthusiastic photographer but found bulky cameras and heavy, breakable glass plates cumbersome and inconvenient. He wanted to make it easier for people to take up photography.

By 1880, he had improved on the previous photographic plate, so he formed his own business. He then developed cellulose film which could be rolled onto a spool which eliminated the need for plates altogether. 

Next, he designed a camera that could make use of a roll of film and he obtained a patent for that invention, which came to be known as the Kodak box camera. The box camera could hold enough rolled film to shoot 100 exposures and it completely revolutionized the art and science of photography. 

The genius of his company is summarized in the slogan he patented - “You press the button. We do the rest.” They sold you the camera, sold you the film, and did the processing and printing. They owned the whole cycle of photography. Even if you did your own developing and printing in a darkroom, you bought their chemicals and paper.

The name “Kodak” is also an invention of George Eastman. It actually has no special meaning. He once explained, “I devised the name myself. The letter ‘K’ had been a favorite with me — it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made words starting and ending with ‘K.’ The word ‘Kodak’ is the result.”

The company known as Eastman Kodak eventually shortened its name to just Kodak. 

By Work-Order Studio to Commons., Public Domain, Link

Printing Part 2: hot off the press, stereotype, typecast, make a good impression

Earlier I had an earlier post about some words and phrases that come from the world of printing and this is part two. Most of the words and phrases are quite old and printing processes have changed a lot, but some of these are still in common usage. I picked up this information from the book Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History. 

When you hear that something is "hot off the press" you know it's something new and up to date, but at one time it was something literally hot. In printing, it's not the paper or the press that is hot in temperature, it is the metal type itself. The Linotype machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler allowed compositors to type on a keyboard what they wanted to print and as they did so the machine would cast the type right there out of molten metal (mostly lead). 

This process really sped up the older typesetting process of arranging "cold" pieces of type letter by letter.

The etymology of the company name Linotype is supposed to have come from the owner of the New York Tribune who excitedly said, “You have done it; you have produced a line o’ type.”

Take the idea of creating thousands of exact printed copies from a single original setting of type further and you get the modern meaning. The term "stereotype" is still widely used to mean when it is assumed that every person from a single group is the exact same. "He is a stereotypical jock."

When an actor is chosen for a role because she fits a certain profile, she has been typecast. “Type” and “cast” are both printing words. Molten metal is poured into a mold in a process known as casting. An actor who "fits the mold" of a role is said to be typecast. "She is often typecast as the suburban mom."

When you meet someone for the first time, like on a date or in a job interview, you want to "make a good impression." The Latin word imprimere means “to press into or upon.” American printers would make a first printing or first edition but in British English a print run was an “impression.”

Reddit

Reddit is a website that allows members to submit links to online content, which is then voted up or down to decide which submissions are most worthy of being read by everyone else.

The site was started in 2004 by then-college students Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. The name Reddit is just a play on the phrase “read it,” as in, “I read it online.”

Members of the site are known as “redditors."

Members of the site have pointed out that serendipitously there is a Latin parallel to the site's name. Reddit is the third-person singular present active indicative of reddō. The Latin “reddit” can be loosely translated as “render” which can mean “to submit for consideration or approval,” which is what people do on the site.

eBay

In 1995, Pierre Omidyar, age 28, began to write the original computer code for an online site that allowed the listing of a direct person-to-person auction for collectible items.

He made a simple prototype and put it on his personal web page. On Labor Day 1995, he launched the service as Auction Web.

The name "eBay" was his second choice for a name. He originally wanted Echo Bay, but it was already used by a Canadian mining company, Echo Bay Mines. Echo Bay Technology Group was Omidyar's consulting firm, but when he tried to register the domain name echobay.com, he found that the mining company owned it. So, he shortened the idea to eBay which was adopted in 1997.

A story that was often told was that he made the site so that his fiancée could trade Pez candy dispensers that she collected. The story was a public relations fabrication. But a true story is that the first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer that was listed as a test but surprisingly sold.

The logo introduced in 2012 does not capitalize the letter "B"

TiVo

By TiVo Inc., CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

TiVo (TEE-voh) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by TiVo Corporation and introduced in 1999. TiVo is both the company and the DVR product that allows the scheduled recording of television programs.

As the early leader in this category, the name began to be a generic trademark used for all DVRs, particularly as a verb - "I tivoed that show."

It is sais that hundreds of anmes were considered for the company/product including "Bongo" and "Lasso." The final name is a combination of TV (in caps) for the television aspect, and the i and o (lower case) referencing the acronym "I/O," which is used in tech applications to mean "input/output."

Generic Trademarks

Registered trademark symbol

A generic trademark (AKA genericized trademark or proprietary eponym) is a trademark or brand name that becomes so popular that is has become either generic name for, or synonymous with, a general class of product or service. This is not something that a trademark holder wants to happen. So, in this case, you can be too popular. The process of a product's name becoming genericized is known by the rather terrible term of genericide.

When this genericide occurs, its original owner loses some of their intellectual property. Examples of generic trademarks include: Thermos, Kleenex, ChapStick, Aspirin, Dumpster, Band-Aid, Velcro, Hoover, Jet Ski and Speedo. This process sometimes is limited to a particular country, though it can apply worldwide. (List of generic trademarks)

A recent case is Chooseco LLC, the publisher of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” book series, suing Netflix Inc., saying the streaming company’s recently released interactive film “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” used the series’ trademark without permission. As is always the case, the trademark owner claims that this use is besmirching the brand’s value.

The generic "teleprompter" is now used for the display device that prompts a person speaking with an electronic visual text like cue cards. It began as the product TelePrompTer (with that internal capitalization) back in the 1950s.

The Otis Elevator Company advertised that it offered "the latest in elevator and escalator design," and thereby used the generic term "elevator" along with Otis's trademark "Escalator" product of moving staircases in the same way. Later, the Trademark Office and the courts concluded that, if Otis used their trademark in that generic way, they could not stop Westinghouse from calling its moving staircases "escalators", and a valuable trademark was lost through genericization.

In America, aspirin is the generic name for the product sold by many companies. But it is still a Bayer trademark name for acetylsalicylic acid in about 80 countries, including Canada where you will find both generic "ASA tablets" and others carrying the Aspirin trademark because the trademark owned by Bayer is still recognized there.

Genericization typically occurs over a period of time because: 1) in which a mark is not used as a trademark (i.e., where it is not used to exclusively identify the products or services of a particular business) 2) where a mark falls into disuse entirely or 3) where the trademark owner does not enforce its rights through actions for passing off or trademark infringement.

Trademark owners may consider developing a generic term for the product to be used in descriptive contexts, to avoid inappropriate use of the "house" mark. Such a term is called a generic descriptor. Examples: "Kleenex tissues" ("facial tissues" being the generic descriptor) or "Velcro brand fasteners" for Velcro brand name hook-and-loop fasteners.

It is often difficult to stop genericide, though companies such as Johnson & Johnson's effort to protect their Band-Aid product not to be used with any similar product.

Google has tried to prevent the term 'googling' in reference to Web searches, but the Oxford English Dictionary and the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary have both noted the widespread use of the verb coinage and yet still defining "google" (all lower case) as a verb meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

I recall examples of companies issuing lawsuits for one dollar to prevent the genericization of a core trademark. The Xerox corporation tried extensive public relations campaigns to push the use of "photocopy" as a verb, rather than the generic "xerox." They were successful, but part of that comes from the fact that there became so many other copier companies that the shorter "copy" is now the most common verb used.

You will find new examples in the news all the time. Adobe Systems doesn't want their trademarked product, Photoshop, used as "photoshopped" to mean a modified image.

Source: wikipedia.org

Bing

The Bing home page varies its look with each refresh - screenshot via Wikimedia

Microsoft was developing a search engine to compete with Google and others and wanted a name that was short, memorable, and easy to spell or rather not misspell. Their previous attempts at a search engine had been called MSN Search, Windows Live Search and later Live Search.

Before settling on "Bing," they had supposedly considered "Bang.” That was rejected because if it was used as a verb (as in "Googling" something), the resulting "I Banged it" sounded inappropriately obscene.

So, they went with “Bing” which met their requirements. It also suggested the term sometimes used when someone finds something they were looking for - bingo!

I also see mentioned that when a lightbulb goes off over a cartoon character's head(a "lightbulb moment") to mean they just got a good idea, you often hear a “bing” sound effect.

In China, the Bing website is called bì yìng, which translates as “very certain to answer.” That sounds good too. Bing's detractors have erroneously suggested that it is an acronym for Bing Is Not Google.

Etsy

Etsy is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies, as well as unique factory-manufactured items. These items cover a wide range, including art, photography, clothing, jewelry, food, bath and beauty products, quilts, knick-knacks, and toys.

Etsy was founded in 2005 and this online marketplace now has millions of registered users - and more than $100 million in revenue.

The company name origin was a mystery and continues to be deliberately mysterious.

In a 2010 interview for Reader's Digest, co-founder Rob Kalin said “I wanted a nonsense word because I wanted to build the brand from scratch. I was watching Fellini's 8½ and writing down what I was hearing. In Italian, you say 'etsi' a lot. It means 'oh, yes.' And in Latin, it means 'and if.'"

But, the following year the other co-founder, Chris Maguire, said that "We then made a founder's pact to give a different origin story for the site's name every time someone asked about it."

Skype

Skype was developed from the idea that we would be using "video phones" - an idea that has been floating around in sci-fi since the 1950s.

When it became a reality, it was expensive and limited.  Skype took advantage of the growing ubiquity of webcams to bring the idea to the masses.

Skype is a peer-to-peer communication technology, meaning one person connects to another person. Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark.

The name for the software is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer", which was then abbreviated to "Skyper." Unfortunately, some of the domain names associated with "Skyper" were already taken, so the company dropped the "r" for Skype.

Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications in 2011 for US $8.5 billion.

Google

Larry Page and Sergei Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. But they changed the name to Google.

Supposedly, the name of the search engine originated from a misspelling of the word "googol" which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Googol was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide very large quantities of information.

The original Google search engine was on the Stanford University website servers with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. The official domain name for google.com was registered on September 15, 1997 and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998 when it was still based in a garage.

Some brands become generic nouns as the vernacular word for a category. Such is the case with brands such as Band-Aid (for any adhesive bandage) and Kleenex (for paper tissues) and in the past "fridge" for any refrigerator had originated with the Frigidaire brand. This is both an honor and a brand confusion issue.

People began to use "google" to mean a search engine and eventually as a verb, as in "I'll google that." Larry Page used it as a verb form before he even launched the company. Though not as commonly used to mean "to search" now, at one time "to google" might have meant to use Yahoo or Bing or AltaVista or any one of the other competing search engines.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an American brand of prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses founded in 2010.
Warby Parker primarily sells eyewear online and through its New York City headquarters. It also maintains a limited number of showrooms in boutiques elsewhere in the United States. Warby Parker's "Home-Try-On program" allows customers to choose five frames from the website, which they receive to try on at home for five days, free of charge. Customers can also upload a photo and try on frames virtually

When someone joins Warby Parker as an employee, one of their gifts is a copy of Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums . That is because the name Warby Parker comes from two early Jack Kerouac characters: Warby Pepper and Zagg Parker.

The company's official corporate name is JAND Inc. and "Warby Parker" is the company's trade name.

Sony

Sony's first unbranded transistor radio - TR-55 (1955)

In the 1950s and 1960s, the transistor radio brought rock and roll music to teenagers and spread it more powerfully than the actual records that were being played by the disc jockeys.

Texas Instruments was the first company licensed by Bell Laboratories to use the newly invented transistor for a small radio. The term transistor was coined by John R. Pierce as a contraction of the term transresistance. The Regency TR-1 weighed 8 ounces, fit in your pocket, turned on instantly and cost $49.95. More than 100,000 were sold.

The Japanese company Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo decided to get into the transistor radio business but wanted a new name that would work with American consumers. They considered using their initials, TTK, but a railway company, Tokyo Kyuko, was known as TTK. They also considered  "Tokyo Teletech" but discovered an American company already using Teletech as a brand name.

Like many other people seeking a new name, they looked to Latin. Looking up "sound" they found "sonus." This sounded a bit like the word "sonny" which was a loan word used in Japan in the 1950s to refer to "sonny boys" - smart and presentable young men. Dropping one "n" in sonny and being closer to the sonus of sound seemed right.

The first Sony-branded product was the TR-55 transistor radio in 1955. The company officially changed their name to Sony in January 1958.

Sony 8-Transistor Radio, Model TR-84, 1959 

Amazon

The Amazon.com home page in 1999

Amazon.com, also known simply as Amazon, was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos.

Bezos incorporated the company as "Cadabra" in 1994 as a play on the "magical" incantation "abracadabra." A year later, he changed the name because he was told it was heard as "cadaver" and a dead body is not a good association for a company.

Bezos also bought the domain relentless.com for possible use, but was told by friends it soiunded too sinister. and briefly considered naming his online store Relentless, but friends told him the name sounded a bit sinister.

The company went online as Amazon.com in 1995.

Bezos selected the name Amazon in a dictionary search wanting an "A" name that would be high on an alphabetized list (an old print phone book idea) and because the Amazon river was by far the "biggest" river in the world, and it matched his goal to be the biggest store in the world. The current logo features a curved "smile arrow" leading from A to Z, representing that the company carries every product from A to Z.

The Amazon River (originally called Río Santa María del Mar Dulce, or Mar Dulce, "sweet sea" because of its fresh water pushing out into the ocean) took on its current name from another Spanish explorer, Francisco de Orellana. He was the first European man to travel from the river's sources in the Andes to the end of the river. He used the name Amazonas because the natives that attacked his expedition were mostly women and he was reminded of the woman warriors, the Amazons, from Hellenic culture. The Amazons were real Scythian women who fought and later were mythologized by the Greeks.