Interstig article on redevelopment of Kodak Canada plant

on 25 Aug in the Globe and Mail Toronto section there was a spread on the former lands of Canadian Kodak.
abreviated text follows:

Once called Kodak Heights, at Black Creek and Eglington - a world unto itself. Had its own theatre groups, fire station, and generating plant. At its high point of over a centrury of production it made more than 350 kilometers of 35mm film a day. The final day of production was June 29 2005.

Building 13 was the last building on the complex to be torn down. It was once Kodak's main manufacturing facility for black and white professional films in the world. Here blocks of silver would be dissilved in hydrocloric acid, mixed with tissues of animal, and coated onto paper and acetate so the world could create pictures.

Photos were by Robert Burley. He has facinating photos on his web site of the interior of the faciliy prior to its demolition.

The description and statistics are a little off.

Silver ingots were dissolved in nitric acid to make silver nitrate and then reacted with special salts. These were mixed with purified gelatin and coated onto...... etc.

Also, the facility at Kodak Park was at least as big if not much larger as were the plants in Colorado, Harrow and Chalon not to mention Brazil.

Sorry to take issue with the technical and statistical description of what was once a very important part of Kodak, but the market did shrink from $20B to about $1B over about 15 years or so. That obsoleted all but the most modern of the facilities which remain to some extent, namely Colorado and Kodak Park along with Harrow and Chalon.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

..... That obsoleted all but the most modern of the facilities which remain to some extent, namely Colorado and Kodak Park along with Harrow and Chalon.

PE

Click to expand...

Dear Ron,

if I am understanding you the right way Kodak is currently producing films and photopapers at Kodak Park in Rochester, in Colorado, in Harrow (England?) and in Chalon (France?). Is that correct?
Some weeks ago I've read a posting on photo.net that there is another Kodak factory in Mexiko for finishing the film masterrolls. Correct?

Best regards,
Jana

verbatim - but wrong-- ah thats always the way the newspaper gets it

If you are involved in a 'news' story and then see it written up in the paper there is always a way to see it is screwed up.

I knew the text was wrong, but typed it as presented.

Googling "silver and nitric acid" after aI saw the article, I came across the work experience resume of a former chemical engineer in the Melbourne plant. The description of the projects he had designed for the production manufacturing process were very interesting. Huge FRE tanks lined with some other plastic to hold the nitric acid, etc.

Nitric is and intersting acid. The best story I heard about putting it to good use was related to Nobel medals... - to quote the nobel web site" of the Germans Max von Laue (1914) and James Franck (1925), and of the Dane Niels Bohr (1922). Professor Bohr's Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen had been a refuge for German Jewish physists since 1933. Max von Laue and James Franck had deposited their medals there to keep them from being confiscated by the German authorities. After the occupation of Denmark in April 1940, the medals were Bohr's first concern, according to the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy (also of Jewish origin and a 1943 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry), who worked at the institute. In Hitler's Germany it was almost a capital offense to send gold out of the country. Since the names of the Laureates were engraved on the medals, their discovery by the invading forces would have had very serious consequences. To quote George de Hevesy (Adventures in Radioisotope Research, Vol. 1, p. 27, Pergamon, New York, 1962), who talks about von Laue's medal: "I suggested that we should bury the medal, but Bohr did not like this idea as the medal might be unearthed. I decided to dissolve it. While the invading forces marched in the streets of Copenhagen, I was busy dissolving Laue's and also James Franck's medals. After the war, the gold was recovered and the Nobel Foundation generously presented Laue and Frank with new Nobel medals." de Hevesy wrote to von Laue after the war that the task of dissolving the medals had not been easy, as gold is "exceedingly unreactive and difficult to dissolve." The Nazis occupied Bohr's institute and searched it very carefully but they did not find anything. The medals quietly waited out the war in a solution of aqua regia.

The other interseing read is about how it is used on an industrial scale in the processing of uranium and other radioactive elements.

Mike Wilde said:

The other interseing read is about how it is used on an industrial scale in the processing of uranium and other radioactive elements.

Click to expand...

Hydrofluoric acid is also used in uranium processing as one step of a sequence that results in uranium hexafluoride, which is then gasified and either passed through a sequence of diffusion stages or, as in Iran, spun through a sequence of centrifuges. Each stage produces a slightly higher ratio of U-235 (fissionable) to U-238. I believe it takes at least a 99% pure U-235 isotope to create a weapon.

Wait, someone is knocking on my door...

JanaM said:

Dear Ron,

if I am understanding you the right way Kodak is currently producing films and photopapers at Kodak Park in Rochester, in Colorado, in Harrow (England?) and in Chalon (France?). Is that correct?
Some weeks ago I've read a posting on photo.net that there is another Kodak factory in Mexiko for finishing the film masterrolls. Correct?

Best regards,
Jana

Click to expand...

Jana;

This is correct as far as I know at the present time.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

Jana;

This is correct as far as I know at the present time.

PE

Click to expand...

Dear Ron,

thank you very much for your answer.

Best regards,
Jana