yeh, but the quality sucked until NASA poured enough money and QA into getting them reliable enough for a manned mission. Then the IC manufacturer's marketing department was able to use the "its good enough to get us to the moon so it's good enough for your application" to sell them.
So NASA gets the credit, much like Steve Jobs gets the credit for the iPod and not Kane Kramer

The you can get the reel WITH the viewmaster viewer for $25, cost goes down with quantity http://www.image3d.com/stereo/pricelist.html

1 - buy a Fuji W3 which is a 3D camera
2 - download the free Stereo Photo Maker http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/ to edit the pictures
3 - Make a 3D Viewmaster at http://www.image3d.com/stereo/

note there are ways of using an existing camera, or even a Nintendo 3DS to take 3D pictures, but the W3 is the simplest, and it could be used at the actual wedding.

>>>Or closer to home, given their association with the movies, maybe create a special effects studio? Or maybe create software to edit images like Photoshop? Is there any reason to think that they would have succeeded at any of those ventures?

They basically did, and did not succeed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cineon

Biomedical. They used emulsion coating experience to make blood analyzing machines. division was sold. Polaroid did not do a similar deal with Technicon (once the market leader) and now both companies are barely there.

wow... tech pan gone? that was the best for making slides from negs...

http://www.hobbyspace.com/ has collected blurbs and links to just about everything space related.
I also recommend you read "The High Frontier" by Gerald K O'Niel, and "The Rocket Company"
by Patrick J. G. Stiennon & David M. Hoerr

Emulsion coating technology. Kodak was good at making media coated with chemicals. This tech is used in blood analyzing machines. Old tech had blood samples going through tubes, mixed with reagents then analyzed optically. Newer tech puts sample onto reagent coated film.

This has been discussed on the a-rocket list http://exrocketry.net/mailman/listinfo/arocket
There are active members who are employees of several space companies.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/ is probably the best collection of resources about space, get to know the companies and people.
read "The Rocket Company" http://www.hobbyspace.com/AAdmin/archive/SpecialTopics/RocketCom/titlePage.html