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

[spookyphoto]

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

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

 

[mshchem]

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!!!

 

[spookyphoto]

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!!!

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.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

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)

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.

 

[MarkS]

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.

 

[spookyphoto]

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.

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.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

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.

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.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Using highly viscous developer (like stand development)

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.