The article is paywalled, but remember that the USA’s business giants during the Cold War were ran quite different than businesses today, especially with the fact that they had major internal R&D labs that did novel research in-house and relied less on transfer coming from research universities. Think about the other stories that you may have heard about Xerox or Bell labs. So Kodak having research abilities is not surprising. They also made the cameras and films for US spy satellites during the Cold War. They were not just a little company that made recreational film. They were a science and chemistry powerhouse.