Eastman Kodak has provided a windfall -- worth almost $500,000 -- for Cornell laboratories.

Late last year, the Rochester, N.Y., company decided to donate a large amount of equipment and laboratory supplies to a good home. By a fortunate coincidence this came to the attention of Charles S. Brown '72, M.S. '73, Kodak senior vice president and chief administration officer, and also a member of the Engineering College Council.

Brown contacted the Office of Corporate and Foundation Relations in Cornell's College of Engineering, which put him in touch with Kelvin Lee, the Samuel C. and Nancy M. Fleming Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the Cornell Institute for Biotechnology and Life Sciences. Brown asked, in essence, "Do you want this stuff?"

Lee made a quick trip to Rochester in December and immediately said yes. Since then, with the help of some U-haul trailers and "some very dedicated staff and students," Lee has hauled back six truckloads of lab equipment, and that is only the beginning. "The next phase will use professional movers," he said. Lee has rented 2,000 square feet of storage space to house an array of gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers, spectrophotometers, incubators, centrifuges, balances, laboratory furniture and some 400 hand-packed boxes of glassware and other lab supplies.

Working through the Biotechnology Institute, he offered first pick to undergraduate teaching labs then contacted laboratories that provide analytical services to the entire university. Now he is offering junior faculty members a chance to look through the warehouse and take what they can use. The equipment is suitable for use in life sciences, veterinary medicine and analytical chemistry labs. Kodak sets the depreciated value at $460,000.