Ilford (and Kodak?) manufacturing codes

Here we go again...

I am guessing that all of us would like to know the date of manufacture of a given product. Just when I thought I had it figured out (thanks to http://www.palomarkovic.net/mobile/BatchNumberDecoder/), I now notice that Ilford Rapid Fixer has TWO numbers on the bottle: the Cat number and the Batch number. Which one is the correct one, or is it in fact possible to date an Ilford product?

On the bottle I got today, the Cat number is 1984262 which palomarkovic dates as 7/2014. The Batch number is 39C133 which yields 3/2016.

That is a big difference. And what about Kodak?

A "Cat number" is most likely a Catalogue Number, which most likely will not change from day to day.

A "cat number" indeed is catalog number and designating a product over its life-time so to say, maybe even with minor changes.

Doc W said:

Here we go again...

I am guessing that all of us would like to know the date of manufacture of a given product. Just when I thought I had it figured out (thanks to http://www.palomarkovic.net/mobile/BatchNumberDecoder/), I now notice that Ilford Rapid Fixer has TWO numbers on the bottle: the Cat number and the Batch number. Which one is the correct one, or is it in fact possible to date an Ilford product?

On the bottle I got today, the Cat number is 1984262 which palomarkovic dates as 7/2014. The Batch number is 39C133 which yields 3/2016.

That is a big difference. And what about Kodak?

Click to expand...

There is a 4 number code on most Kodak boxes and bottles. For example 1424. The first two is the year (2014) and the last 2 numbers is the week. So 1424 is 24th week of 2014.
Do not know about Ilford.

APUGuser19 said:

Anybody remember the days when expiration dates were stamped in plain english that anybody can understand?

Click to expand...

In those days, Kodak photographic chemicals usually had no "best before" dates.

In general, it was the adoption of ISO standards that brought rise to much of the "best before" dating, and much of that seems to me to be related more to the packaging than anything else.

The Ilford system is the first two digits indicate a month and they go 1 to 99. Example 2000 january is 01, Feb 2000 is 02 Dec is 12, Jan 2001 is 13.

Unfortunately I do not know where my key is to tie the month to a starting date. It was most valuable for DDX which has a shelf life and Printing paper if it was sitting on a shelf at the store for years.

I played with decoder and it seems to work, although if the starting point is wrong I would have no way to know.

Cans were better. So was paper that the manufacturer aged naturally. Paper was good for many years, not so today.