Fifty one year old Kodak documentary

[Ray Rogers]

The only equipment run by air pressure were mixers.

How was emulsion moved around the lab, to and from de-aeriation, and to the coating heads?

With 24 cans in the CTB

CTB?

Larger scales used huge electric mixers, many with shrouds to prevent arcing when solvents were added.

Could you say a bit more on this?
Do you mean the solvents might catch fire?

I have observed underwater arcing? sparking? once or twice when "bumping" the heating/mixing equipment... I was quite surprised!

[Photo Engineer]

Ray;

I moved the emulsion by cart in 1 L - 20 L containers with light-tight covers. What?

CTB = Constant Temperature Bath.

Solvents can catch fire due to arcing in electric and electronic equipment. So yes, there was a potential hazard. The mixer motor was above the solution. It cannot be below or it would short out.

PE

[Louis Nargi]

Thanks, interesting to see how its done.

[dyetransfer]

Hi Ray - when I visited Fotokemika in Croatia, there was about a 50:50 mix of men and women working. The emulsion chemist was a woman, the coating engineer was a man, two women did all the mixing and chemistry work, young men clambered all over the coating machine in the dark looping up the emulsion on the dryer, and a mix of men and women worked the slitting boxing and inspection area.

Regards - Jim

[Ray Rogers]

Hi Ray - when I visited Fotokemika in Croatia, there was about a 50:50 mix of men and women working. The emulsion chemist was a woman, the coating engineer was a man, two women did all the mixing and chemistry work, young men clambered all over the coating machine in the dark looping up the emulsion on the dryer, and a mix of men and women worked the slitting boxing and inspection area.

Regards - Jim

Interesting. That sounds atypically well intergrated, but I guess we are missing data for the total numbers employed, rather than just what we have actually seen in pictures and first hand.

I wonder if there is more equality between the sexes in Croatia in general?

[John Shriver]

The film being spooled is Verichrome Pan. So this movie has to be made after the introduction of Verichrome Pan in 1957. Also, the emulsion of the film being loaded is grey, if it were Verichrome (ortho), it would be a bright magenta color.

So perhaps Kodak chose to use an absolutely obsolete coating machine for the part of the film that was "sensitive" to competitors. Or maybe they used more obsolete technology for Verichrome Pan, and saved the newer coating machines for the professional films? Or, since Verichrome Pan was by far the most popular film in 1957, they were using both old and new machines to make it, just for capacity reasons.

Interesting that the spooling machine is spooling either 620 or 616 size film. I suppose it would be easy to tell from the pattern of frame numbering.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I wonder if there is more equality between the sexes in Croatia in general?

Generally in the East Bloc, gender equality was encouraged in professional and industrial spheres under Communism, so there is quite a large proportion of women in medicine, engineering, and the sciences compared to the West, but women were still expected to play a large role in raising children and in the household, so while there was equality in some spheres, it wasn't exactly universal.

[Photo Engineer]

Generally, Kodak was very sensitive to the positive mutagenic or teratogenic properties of some chemicals and so they were quite conservative. There were a lot of women managers and researchers. The Asst Dir of Res was a woman and quite a superb emulsion maker.

PE

[Ray Rogers]

The Asst Dir of Res was a woman and quite a superb emulsion maker.PE

JS?

[Photo Engineer]

Yes. Judy!

Thinking it over, this requires a considerable effort on your part to just look up such trivia, whereas for me it is easy as I knew her personally.

PE