RE: Silly little Kodak History question.

Wayne,

> Bugger... not you Don.
> My memory is not as good as it tells me it is.
> Here's a link I turned up.
>
> http://skymaster.kjsl.com/pipermail/kodachrome/2004-September/001040.html
>
> I don't remember ever hearing of anyone developing Kodachrome outside of
> Kodak until the K-14 process. As far as I knew that's when they began a
> concerted effort to streamline the processing and reduce the cost of the
> equipment so that licensing others would be practical. The $10,000,000 per
> installation cost that I cited is a figure that I remember from K-12 days,
> I'm sure that the smaller processors for the K-14 process were much
> cheaper.

The process was a K-14 line as I recall but it wasn't inexpensive at all.
For example dye baths were mixed 2000 liters at a time. We also had huge
centrifuges to recover the dye from the effluent streams. One for each
color. 3M had to maintain an analytical lab just for the QC of the
Kodachrome process. The processors were huge and custom designed by 3M
engineering. Add to that the plant infrastructure of steam generators, heat
exchangers, chillers, effluent recovery and control, not to mention the
silver recovery units. All very expensive.

3M designed and made all of the pre-process splicers and post process
rewinders and mounters. But compared to the equipment Kodak used it was
almost Victorian by comparison. My father in law worked for Kodak for 33
years and through him and other Kodak reps I knew, plus the trips I made up
to Rochester bi-yearly for several years, I got to know a lot about the
Great Yellow Father.

> On the subject of 3M, what do you know about the relationship between 3M
> and Kodak? Was Dynachrome just re-badged Kodachrome or a different
> product.

I don't think 3M sold a Kodachrome clone film, rather an Ektachrome clone
made perhaps by 3M or for 3M by GAF maybe.

That's all in another lifetime for me and as we all know things have changed
greatly at Eastman.

Another thing that is strange to note is that my spell checker for my e-mail
client doesn't recognize the word Kodachrome, a sign of the times.

Don
Received on Wed Jul 13 20:13:27 2005