ROCHESTER, N.Y. — As the USA Olympic Bobsled team prepared for this years Olympic games, you may have noticed a familiar WNY logo on the top of the sled. The Kodak companies bright yellow emblem sits right at the front. While this sled cannot be used at the actual games due to IOC advertising rules, it ties back to a richer history involving Kodak and the Olympics.
Kodak’s involvement with the Olympic games can be traced all the way back to the 1893 games, with their major sponsorship ending in 2008. Todd Gustavson, curator of the technology collection at the George Eastman museum, took us into the vault for a peak at some Olympic history.
“Every 4 years you’d, you see the Olympic logos on their various products,” Gustavson said, “So you’d see it on, on film packaging, also processed slide boxes. They also sold Kodak sponsored Olympic watches, so real cameras and, and, and one-time use cameras,”…