Like Marshall Fieldʼs, Woolworth's and Pan Am, another American legend has fallen as Kodak is swept off its feet by the rolling changes in financial tides. The company that changed photography from a complicated, inconvenient profession to a leisure activity every mom, pop and amateur artist could afford has filed bankruptcy, showing that even nostalgia can't boost stock prices.

Over the past 200 years, photography has moved from a complicated, even hazardous profession to a past time anyone with even a cell phone can attempt. Real leaps in innovation began in the 1800s, with French inventors Joseph Niépce and Louis Daguerre making the idea of capturing visual scenes a commercially viable reality.

With the invention of the first commercial photographic process, daguerreotype, visual scenes could be captured through the use of silvered copper plates, mercury fumes and long exposure times. But this process was labor-intensive, expensive and dangerous (causing users to suffer from severe health complications or death due to mercury poisoning), and so the collodion process soon superseded it.

It was around this time that a young, high school dropout named George Eastman found himself mesmerized by the possibilities of photography. Wanting to capture his trip to Santo Domingo, Eastman, who was born and bread in New York, purchased an early model camera, an object as big as a microwave that required a heavy tripod, glass plates, complicated chemicals and a range of extras. He realized something needed to be changed in order to simplify the process, so by night, in his mother's kitchen, he experimented with emulsion processes. Soon, he was able to come up with a formula for gelatin dry plates, eliminating the need for cumbersome and messy wet plate processes that were popular at the time.

In 1880, Eastman Dry Plate Company was born, and Eastman began selling his mass-produced dry plates to photographers around the nation. However, Eastman was unsatisfied, and began searching for a way "to make the camera as convenient as the pencil." His solution: paper film and the Kodak camera. In 1888, with the release of the Kodak camera, families who at the time owned, at most, a dozen photos, were given access to photography. History changed with the introduction of "Kodak," and for $25, amateurs and enthusiasts could purchase a camera, pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures. What we would call "snapshot photography" was born, and with it an icon.

And as if the democratization of photography was not enough, Eastman was also a pioneer in the field of advertising and branding. His slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest," became a household name not long after its conception. In 1897, an electric sign on London's Trafalgar Square sparkled with the word "Kodak," one of the first of such signs to be used in advertising. From billboards to newspapers to magazines, Eastman was able to transform the word "Kodak" into a brand synonymous with photography.

Still, innovation leads us forward, and from the invention of the first Kodak camera to today, photography has seen a range of technological advancements. Cameras are now digital, and even the motion picture industry is turning away from traditional film. At the flick of a wrist anyone with a smartphone can become an amateur photographer. And while photography has become more accessible and convenient, the art of photography seems to have slipped into the shadows. Families with their photo albums and mantelpiece displays now have Photobucket and Facebook for sharing pictures.

But what happens in 100 years, or even 10, when that computer is long since forgotten? Are the photographs and memories gone as well? Some innovations have brought us closer to a perfect existence, while others, despite improving convenience, have seemingly moved us in the opposite direction.

So, as a new generation of iPhone photographers steps in, an era dies, and with it goes a company who helped to build the very field that has now swept it off its feet. But Kodak isn't dead yet, and as the company heads to court over the next couple months, we can hope that like its contemporary, General Motors, this company will once again see itself back on its feet.