People & Events
Eastman Kodak Introduces Full Color Photography
With the coming of the twentieth century and its intoxicating rhythms,
many innovators intensified their search for the means to render
photography in full color. George Eastman was as interested as anyone in
conquering the problem. Indeed, convinced (correctly) that color
photography would be mostly the province of amateurs, he dedicated himself
to finding a process that not only could offer the complete spectrum of
colors but would be simple to use. He eventually found one, although it
would not turn out to be simple to develop.
In 1910, when Eastman established a color laboratory at Kodak Park
under the leadership of MIT graduate Emerson Packard, lantern slides and
hand-colored prints were enjoying tremendous popularity. Among the more
successful marketers of lanterns slides were the Lumiere brothers, who a
decade earlier had stunned the world with their projected motion pictures.
The Lumieres offered to sell their lantern-slide operation to Eastman, but
a visit to their Paris offices revealed a family operation in disarray, and
Eastman, a prim bachelor with strict business standards, left in disgust.
Nevertheless, the European trip had strengthened Eastman's resolve. "I
spent a good deal of time on new developments in color," he wrote of the
trip, "which I hope will develop into something commercial." At Kodak
Park, he instructed Packard to proceed as best he could without infringing
on the Lumiere patents.
A series of efforts led by Packard and other Kodak employees resulted in
the first signs of victory: a process that used red and green filters and
transformed negatives directly into positives. Dubbed Kodachrome, the color
process would no doubt have gone to market, but progress was stalled by the
outbreak of World War I. Adding insult to injury, Eastman's Kodachrome
prints received poor reviews at a March 1915 demonstration at the Royal
Photographic Society and at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San
Francisco.
At this impasse, two complete amateurs entered the story and saved the
day. Leopold Damrosch Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr., both sons of famous
musicians, had met as schoolmates and been drawn together by their mutual
interest in sonatas and the Brownie camera. After seeing an early color
movie, Mannes and Godowsky became convinced that they could do better and
built a three-lens camera that combined the three primary colors projected
as light. This had already been done by others, but in their excitement the
failures of others did not seem worth exploring.
The two went on to college and met again in New York after graduation,
whereon they fell to photographic experimentation again. With the help of
impresario S. L. (Roxy) Rothafel, they were able to use the projection
booth at the Rialto to produce their first dark, fuzzy pictures. Soon they
had surpassed the efforts of others and were photographing a part of the
color spectrum on double-layered plates -- in the bathtubs and sinks of
their homes.
Their parents did not approve of these scientific forays, however, and
so in 1922 they turned to George Eastman for financial help. Eastman proved
non-committal, but two years later, Mannes and Godowsky were able to
ingratiate themselves with C.E. Kenneth Mees, director of the Eastman Kodak
Research Laboratory, and with that slender entree, to receive funding from
other sources.
In 1930 the Eastman Kodak Company made improvements in color-movie
technology, but it still lagged behind the Technicolor Motion Picture
Corporation.
Mees, anxious to remain at the forefront, finally agreed to hire Mannes and
Godowsky. (By this time, Eastman himself, ill and five years into his
retirement, was far from the action at Kodak Park.)
With the Eastman School of Music at their disposal, the duo were finally
able to hit their stride, although their methods were confusing to those
around them. At the school, they were known as "those color experts," at
Kodak Park, as "man and God." Working in a completely light-tight darkroom,
they timed their plate developing by whistling Brahms at two beats to the
second, leaving their colleagues to wonder what had become of the famed
Kodak efficiency ethic.
Doubts about Mannes and Godowsky increased as the Great Depression wore
on. Mees, by then a vice president, could only hope for the best as he
stalled other departments filled with accomplished chemists and pressured
the musicians for results. Under these conditions, Mannes and Godowsky
developed first a two-color film and then a three-color one, both of which
could be easily used by amateurs.
The Kodachrome name was revived, and on April 15, 1935, Kodachrome
motion picture film went on sale. Shortly after that, Eastman Kodak
introduced Kodachrome film for color slides. The process by which this film
was developed was -- and still is -- maddeningly complex, but as with
everything else at Kodak, the amateur did not have to worry about that,
since developing was handled by the company. Vivid color photography for
everyday use had become a reality.
written by David Lindsay
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