Calling Calbe R-09 formula a "pre-WW II" formula is confusing to me as well, since, as I understand it, it can also be called a WW-II formula.
That's how the distributors describe it, as made to the pre War Agfa formula. Perhaps there were shortages during the War Suphite needed for military products.
As the full formula have never been published but we know there have been evolutionary changes its hard to name them.
I tried to make things quite clear in the very first post. But it ain't easy
As for as Nitrogen, was there any official AGFA or Calbe for that matter mention or discussion of this?
Agfa used to have something on their website, they had a long article on 100 years of Rodinal at one time, which I think they also released as a Press Release as well as putting it online. They used to mention the use of Nitrogen in literature too.
This one though has been written about a few times so should be easy to find & verify.
Maybe I am guilty for not reading everything here on apug - again.
Sorry if I am lowering the curve, but for example with nitrogen, the only thing I could quickly turn up were a few suggestions and not documented Agfa policy. Perhaps there are patents, or inside info, but whatever, I am just trying to follow the conversation not stall it. Please continue!
I have to go back and re-read too
I did a lot of research, and have turned up far more since, that totally backs up what I wrote in the first post.
I also did a lot of calculations on the reaction quantities particularly of the p_Aminophenol, Potassium Metabisulphite and Hydroxide reactions. This one made slightly more complex (but not difficult) because the Metbisulphite forms Sodium and Potassium Sulphite, when they used Sodium Hydroxide.
I still have a lot more data to go through, but there's alimit on how much time I want to spend on Rodinal
Kodak have a wealth of information on these developers, they have/had all Desalme's writing on similar developers, the free bases and salts, I'd guess Meees & Shepperd collected the information while at Wratten as they worked on p-Aminophenols and other developing agents in the UK.
Gerald Koch seems to have disappeared, he would maybe have been able to shed some light on Kodak's commercila "Rodinal" type high concentration p-Amininophenol developer "Kodinol". But I'm not sure who can help I think he and I discussed this before in an exchange abut Kodak's "Kodelon" developing agent. This is stated to be p-Aminophenol Oxalate which maybe what's used in Kodinol, but I have a photograph of a bottle of Kodak Kodelon which quite clearly states p-Amininophenol Hydrochloride.
That's the kind of woolly areas we delve into, no-one has really done any research at all into developer history.
I was told in a previous post (different thread) not to bother with pre 40's developer formulae. While there's a grain of sense you actually need to go back to the roots. Most of the early formulae are very similar but there are some milestones and sidetracks, but nearly all modern formulae come from those early roots.
So I'll keep plodding away, there were other early alternatives.
PMK is just a very early Pyrogallol/Metol developer used much more dilute with a different alkali
We don't always need to re-invent the wheel just find the ones that fell off photographers carts and adapt & make them fit modern films.
Ian