ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Kodak’s moment has come and gone.

The glory days, when Eastman Kodak Co. ruled the world of film photography, lasted for over a century. Then came a stunning reversal of fortune: cutthroat competition from Japanese firms in the 1980s and a seismic shift to the digital technology it pioneered but couldn’t capitalize on. Now comes a wistful worry that this American business icon is edging toward extinction.

Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, raising the specter that the 132-year-old trailblazer could become the most storied casualty of a digital age.

Already a shadow of its former self, cash-poor Kodak will reorganize in bankruptcy court, as it seeks to boost its cash position and stay in business. The Rochester, N.Y.-based company hopes to peddle a trove of photo patents and morph into a new-look powerhouse built around printers and ink.

Even if it succeeds, it seems unlikely to ever resemble what its red-on-yellow K logo long stood for — a brand synonymous in every corner of the planet with capturing, collecting and sharing images.

“Kodak played a role in pretty much everyone’s life in the 20th century because it was the company we entrusted our most treasured possession to — our memories,” said Robert Burley, a photography professor at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Its yellow boxes of film, point-and-shoot Brownie and Instamatic cameras, and those hand-sized prints that made it possible for countless millions to freeze-frame their world “were the products used to remember — and really define — what that entire century looked like,” Burley said.

But Kodak has notched just one profitable year since 2004. At the end of a four-year digital makeover during which it dynamited aged factories, chopped and changed businesses and eliminated tens of thousands of jobs, it closed 2007 on a high note with net income of $676 million.

It soon ran smack into the recession — and its momentum reversed.

Years of investor worries over whether Kodak might seek protection from its creditors intensified in September when it hired major restructuring law firm Jones Day as an adviser. Its stock, which topped $94 in 1997, slid below $1 a share for the first time and, by Jan. 6, hit an all-time closing low of 37 cents.

Three board members recently resigned, and last week, the company announced that it realigned and simplified its business structure in an effort to cut costs, create shareholder value and accelerate its long-drawn-out digital transformation.

The human toll reaches back to the 1980s, when Tokyo-based Fuji, an emerging archrival, began to eat into Kodak’s fat profits with novel offerings like single-use film cameras. Beset by excessive caution and strategic stumbles, Kodak was finally forced to cut costs. Its long slide had begun.

Mass layoffs came every few years, unraveling a cozy relationship of company and community that was perhaps unequaled in the annals of American business. Kodak has sliced its global payroll to 18,800 from a peak of 145,300 in 1988, and its hometown rolls to 7,100 from 60,400 in 1982.

It’s a far cry from George Eastman’s paternalistic heyday.

Founded by Eastman in 1880, Kodak marketed the world’s first flexible roll film in 1888 and turned photography into an overnight craze with a $1 Brownie camera in 1900. Innovation and mass production were about to put the world into cars and airplanes, the American Century was unfolding, and Kodak was ready to record it.

“It’s one of the few companies that wiggled its way into the fabric of American life and the American family,” said Bob Volpe, 69, a 32-year employee who retired in 1998. “As someone at Kodak once said, ‘We put chemicals in one end so our customers can get memories out the other.’ ”

Later, through the 1990s, Kodak splurged $4 billion on developing the photo technology inside most of today’s cellphones and digital devices. But a reluctance to ease its heavy reliance on film allowed rivals like Canon Inc. and Sony Corp. to rush largely unhindered into the fast-emerging digital arena. The immensely lucrative analog business Kodak worried about undermining too soon was virtually erased in a decade by the filmless photography it invented.

In November, Kodak warned it could run out of cash in a year if it didn’t sell 1,100 digital-imaging patents it’s been shopping around since July. Analysts estimate they could fetch at least $2 billion.

In the meantime, Kodak has focused its future on new lines of inkjet printers that it says are on the verge of turning a profit. It expects printers, software and packaging to produce more than twice as much revenue by 2013 and account by then for 25 percent of the company’s total revenue, or nearly $2 billion.

Experts see tough road for Kodak to reinvent itself

Even in bankruptcy, Kodak boasts some enviable strengths: a golden brand, technology firepower that includes a rich collection of photo patents, and more than $4 billion in annual sales of digital cameras, printers, and inks.

But all that may not be enough to revive its declining fortunes in a Chapter 11 overhaul.

Of the many restructuring experts interviewed by The Associated Press on Thursday, none are optimistic that Kodak can make a strong comeback.

Selling select business lines and patents and making the right bets on a limited number of new technology products could allow the Eastman Kodak Co. to survive, several experts said.

But none see a path back to anything close to the glory days of the former photography titan.

Whatever the company does now is likely to be too little, too late, said Gary Adelson, managing director of turnaround firm NHB Advisors in Los Angeles.

“I can’t imagine a big future for Kodak,” said Adelson, who thinks the company should just sell its assets.

“I think it’s going to be another one of those companies that didn’t make the transition to the future.”

— The Associated Press