Kodak was five years too late to accelerate its shift to the digital age, Perez, 65, said in an interview in August.

Kodak hasn't sold enough printers and presses to create sufficient demand for replacement ink and supplies and service contracts to end losses in those units. In February, it projected operating profits in consumer and commercial inkjet printing by the end of 2013.

"Essentially they're moving away from a very profitable model that generated multiple sales -- most everyone got double prints -- to one that's awfully difficult to make a profit in," said John Ward, a 20-year Kodak veteran who is now a lecturer in Rochester Institute of Technology's college of business.

"Perez had a clear understanding that change had to happen and it had to happen quickly," said Ward, 49, who met Perez shortly after he joined Kodak as president and chief operating officer in 2003. "Clearly they could have made some changes faster, but there just weren't a lot of options to replace the film business."

George Eastman

Kodak was founded by George Eastman, who developed a method for dry-plate photography before introducing the Kodak camera in 1888, according to the company's website. It went on to invent film, enabling Thomas Edison to develop the motion picture camera, Brownie cameras selling for $1 and Kodachrome film.

Paul Simon immortalized the film in his 1973 song "Kodachrome." The single, which praised Kodachrome's "nice bright colors," peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Kodak stopped producing the film in 2009.

"Everyone in the 20th century has been familiar with the Kodak name and its products," said Burley of Ryerson's School of Image Arts. "We've not only used them to memorialize our families and their histories, but also for diagnostics in hospitals, producing books and newspapers and police investigative work. And then the whole world of Hollywood is based around Kodak products."

First Digital Camera

The company also invented the first digital camera in 1975, which it shelved because it would threaten its lucrative film business, Perez said in an interview in March.

"Like many other companies on the East Coast, Kodak has been phenomenal in research and patents and not so good commercializing things, actually terrible commercializing things," Perez said.