A few excerpts from Kodak develops: A film giant's self-reinvention (Feb 2010) seem to suggest they just couldn't transition fast enough rather than became irrelevant.

... every Oscar winner for Best Motion Picture in the past 81 years has used Kodak film... 65 percent of Kodak's business now comes from business-to-business products and 70 percent of them are digital. Hayzlett's message is simple: every aspect of Kodak's business has been reinvigorated by winds of change.

The usual explanation is that Kodak failed to see the approach of digital.

In fact, Kodak was more than ahead of its competitors: it invented the digital camera -- even though it lacked the foresight to exploit it.

The Virtudyne Digital Donkey finally comes of age.

Not exclusively USA

Some 100 students achieved their PhDs by working on some aspect of the mission during the many years it took to develop, build and then fly the probe. Most of these PhDs were earned at Stanford, and at the universities in Huntsville; and in Aberdeen, UK. More than 350 undergraduate students also worked on GP-B, including one who later became the first female American astronaut in space, Sally Ride. Another was Eric Cornell, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001.

Genuinely a brilliant lifetimes work, here's a nice write up by the LA Times on Ed Stone the Voyager lead scientist.

Playing in veteran mode when I loose, and then stubbornly refuse to change my choice, I'll constantly loose as the computer then 'correctly predicts I would play scissors' or whatever losing choice I've made repeatedly. Surely at some point it should think I won't be that dumb any more and I'll change my choice so shouldn't it change it's choice at some point too? Why does it always stick with it's winning choice? How many of the previous 200,000 rounds would have over twenty consecutive choices of scissors for it to always choose rock. Having "convinced" the computer I'll play scissors every time I can then win when I eventually choose paper. I can't get more than three consecutive ties though. For some reason I'm reminded of Derren Brown recording for hours on end until he got twenty consecutive heads in a coin toss in one take.

When I am working on a problem, I don't think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful then I know it is wrong - R. Buckminster Fuller

I always seem to make negative progress on a Wednesday so I ask myself if I didn't come to work at all surely that would be a positive productivity gain. Tried that rational with my boss and he suggested trying Saturday instead so for now I'll just stick to going backwards on my projects on Wednesdays.

Well said sir! As an example, Frame-dragging was proposed as a theory in 1918 based on Einstein's theory of General Relativity but wasn't able to be tested until 1996 with a couple of special satellites and even then not accurately enough to be provable until 2006. Since we had barely left the ground let alone orbit the earth at that point I'm sure it must have seemed un-testable at the time.

The man you refer to is Rob Hall who at the time had climbed Everest more times than any other non-Sherpa. He was leading a group of paying climbers that he wouldn't abandon to save his own life. I recommend reading the Jon Krakenauer book Into Thin Air which covers the biggest tradgey on Everest that occured whilst the IMAX team were filming. Ed Shears and David Breshers part of the IMAX team were part of the rescue effort. From the outside the world of high altitude climbing does appear to be about thrill seeking but like most things we don't truely understand there is so much more to it.