FIRST, IT'S GOT TO WORK

First It's Got to Work is a firsthand account of life inside one of America's most famous technology companies during a period of enormous change.

Richard Bolton joined Eastman Kodak in the late 1960s and spent the next three decades working as an engineer in research and product development during the company's push beyond traditional film. Through diary-like recollections and personal observations, he recounts the technical challenges, corporate politics, and occasional absurdities of life inside Kodak's engineering culture.

Bolton worked on a wide range of projects including microfilm systems, optical recording concepts, electronic imaging products, and early video technologies. Along the way he witnessed the introduction of the Disc camera, the rise of home video recording, early CCD imaging work, and Kodak's internal struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing electronics world.

The book offers an insider's look at how large engineering organizations actually function - how ideas begin, how projects succeed or fail, and how corporate culture shapes innovation. It is both a personal memoir and a technical history of a pivotal era when photography began its transition from chemistry to electronics.

Written with humor and candor, First It's Got to Work provides a rare engineer's perspective on the people, technologies, and decisions that shaped the later years of the Kodak empire.