Great historical book on high altitude aerial reconnaissance film processing from the NRO

Not sure where to post this but here is a great book on the history of film processing for high altitude aerial reconnaissance by the NRO.

The book "Bridgehead: Eastman Kodak Company's Covert Photoreconnaissance Film Processing Program" is a significant work by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that details the covert photoreconnaissance film processing efforts by Eastman Kodak during the Cold War. It is part of the series "In the Words of Those Who Served" and offers an unclassified account of the critical support efforts of Bridgehead in the early years of national reconnaissance. The book is available for purchase on platforms like Amazon and eBay, and it provides insights into the history of Bridgehead's role in converting reconnaissance film into imagery

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Here's a link to the full book (pdf)

I bought a copy of this book. Great reading! Using highly viscous developer (like stand development) to bring out edge effect of objects on the ground. EK picked up the film at the Rochester Airport tarmac. Great book. Free to read!!!

mshchem said:

I bought a copy of this book. Great reading! Using highly viscous developer (like stand development) to bring out edge effect of objects on the ground. EK picked up the film at the Rochester Airport tarmac. Great book. Free to read!!!

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I just saw the book advertised for $ 36 which seemed reasonable except that I had already read the online version.
I got to use the sensitometer on page 126 and even a better one. Also used some of the films on page 91 thru 93.

spookyphoto said:

Not sure where to post this but here is a great book on the history of film processing for high altitude aerial reconnaissance by the NRO.



Here's a link to the full book (pdf)

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Fascinating. When I was stationed in Japan in the USAF in 1965-67, there were spy planes flown out of Turkey over Russia and China to a nearby base where I was stationed. There was an operating center on my base handling the flights but they threw me out of their room when running the missions. I was in crypto handling data security machines but wasn;t suppose to be involved in the missions directly. Everything was Top Secret. Interesting times.

I worked at "Bridgehead" (known to the. world as "Kodak Hawk-Eye" from 1984-2010. I took a number of the photos in the book, and scanned them all from my department's archive.
It was fascinating, highly secret, and extremely high quality work. I'm glad that those stories are available to the public now... but note that much of the imagery from those days remains classified. (there are none in the book).
Of course the technology has gone far beyond what we did in those days; I understand, though, that the US military was still flying film in the U-2 (some of the time) until last year.

MarkS said:

I worked at "Bridgehead" (known to the. world as "Kodak Hawk-Eye" from 1984-2010. I took a number of the photos in the book, and scanned them all from my department's archive.
It was fascinating, highly secret, and extremely high quality work. I'm glad that those stories are available to the public now... but note that much of the imagery from those days remains classified. (there are none in the book).
Of course the technology has gone far beyond what we did in those days; I understand, though, that the US military was still flying film in the U-2 (some of the time) until last year.

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Must have been a fantastic place to work. Wish there could be a photo museum with all equipment. Maybe at the international spy museum in Washington with Keith Melton.

MarkS said:

I worked at "Bridgehead" (known to the. world as "Kodak Hawk-Eye" from 1984-2010. I took a number of the photos in the book, and scanned them all from my department's archive.
It was fascinating, highly secret, and extremely high quality work. I'm glad that those stories are available to the public now... but note that much of the imagery from those days remains classified. (there are none in the book).
Of course the technology has gone far beyond what we did in those days; I understand, though, that the US military was still flying film in the U-2 (some of the time) until last year.

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The cryptographic machines I worked on in 1967 that were classified Secret are now on the web in picture form with an explanation of how they worked (well, generally, not the internal circuits). Of course, the messages they transmitted are still classified (or not) so aren't included, much like the Kodak surveillance processing machines are shown in picture form but not the actual surveillance photos.

mshchem said:

Using highly viscous developer (like stand development)

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That's like covering an orange in body filler and calling it an apple. Viscous developers (and total standstill development of things like litho film - not what is called 'stand' development today) do serve purposes, if the materials are designed for it, but with most of the developers people use for 'stand' development, any adjacency effects have little to do with reduced agitation (unless it's so reduced to the level that it produces extremely uneven development) or staining (not very good colour couplers, essentially) and a great deal more to do with very dilute metol or PQ characteristics.

What I recall is that the film could be "slathered " in a developer with sufficient thickening agents that the film could travel outside of the bath (tank) and continue development. It's a fantastic document. Cold War James Bond stuff.

I have never messed with stand development, what do I know

I remember a very fancy spray processor come thru the dept. I was working in that I assumed came from you guys or the AF base.

In 1962-63 while in college I had a summer job working for a company that made aerial reconaissance cameras for the military. I remember one model would take photos develop and print contact prints inflight. And the film was, if I remember correctly, 5” wide .

Shaps said:

In 1962-63 while in college I had a summer job working for a company that made aerial reconaissance cameras for the military. I remember one model would take photos develop and print contact prints inflight. And the film was, if I remember correctly, 5” wide .

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Probably for the kh1,2,3,and 4 satellites

spookyphoto said:

Probably for the kh1,2,3,and 4 satellites

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Not for satellites but for airplanes.

mshchem said:

What I recall is that the film could be "slathered " in a developer with sufficient thickening agents that the film could travel outside of the bath (tank) and continue development. It's a fantastic document. Cold War James Bond stuff.

I have never messed with stand development, what do I know

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You can try it yourself if you have a suitable coating device and a developer thickened into paste with methyl cellulose or similar - in essence, it's very similar to the pod used in Polaroid peel apart (just not a monobath) - you'll need a roller squeegee or equivalent to remove it before the stop. It's essentially a form of standstill development (i.e. zero agitation) that attempts to deliver even enough development. It also was attractive to the specialist markets that used it because it allowed a level of frame-to-frame +/- development control (it was applied with a coating hopper or equivalent) within a long roll.

What is very notable is that while there's quite a bit about thickened developers (and specifically developing machine design) in the SPSE handbook, there's very little about the then very new DIR couplers (and the attempts to analogise the effect in B&W emulsions etc), which effectively would allow a drastic increase in low frequency sharpness in emulsions (aka, getting the effects of standstill when combined with sufficient agitation for absolutely even development) that could be developed in conventional non-thickened developers.