Indeed, Fisher developed the first coupler with a ballasted side chain containing a sulfonic acid.
Dear PE
You mixed something up:
(I like that pun…)
Rudolf FISCHER did not invent the ballasted coupler. He was not even affiliated to Agfa.
Back in time prior to his invention there was that invention of Du Hauron of 1862 of making a colour image by overlaying three transparent sheet images (Tripack). Each forming a separation image (resembling red, blue and green hues) dyed in the corresponding hues. Thus the idea of subtractive colour imaging. Though not as convenient as we now are used to.
Further there were the works of Homolka and others who described staining developers, whose oxidized forms, themselves or the couplings of those, formed a dye. (Primary Color Development).
Fischer invented in 1911 the coupling of the oxidation-product of an apt developer with a colorless `coupler´ and embedding these, forming apt hues, in three differently sensitized emulsion layers (ThreeLayer).
Thus he gained more freedom in creating dyes in contrast to using primary color development, and further changed Hauron’s loose tripack into a fixed trilayer. However, those couplers and even dyes turned out to be diffusing throughout the three layers, spoiling color image forming.
He was working for “Neue Photographische Gesellschaft” who used his ideas to market photographic printing papers which brought up mono(!)-chrome images.
There seem to have come up a dogma then that the Fischer-principle was a deadend to natural colour film.
Though not scoring, Fischer showed the principle for both!! the Agfacolor- as well as the Kodachrome- technique: `3-layer chromogenic´.
Now to the Agfacolor-Process:
It was invented by Schneider and Fröhlich/Kumetat
Schneider in 1934 was busy with fine-grain development. He was placed under the `D´ of the `R&D´ department of Agfa. Whereas the color-guys sat at (scientific) Research, and were then busy with `optical´ colour by means of the lens-grid-technique as well as silver dye-bleach and even the combination of both. Schneider thought that creating a dye-image with staining developers would lead to a lesser grain. (The later Agfa Vario-XL and other following chromogenic B&W films regained this idea.) When not scoring he thought that somehow! this dye-forming could lead to the simple natural-colour film. Staining developers did not show an outcome, but then he remembered Fischer’s ideas. He also remembered the technique of mordant dyes adhering somewhat to gelatine as he had tried two years before (antihalation) by means of certain functional groups known for mordant dying of cotton’s cellulose. Some outcome was to expect and though the struggle for the optical path was going on the CEO of the film plant decided to have the development department a go. The same days when Kodak announced their Kodachrome technique.
At this point Fröhlich from Research department and Kumetat had the idea to just add a fatty tail to the coupler as he was employing at another diffusion problem. (To my understanding a mechanic feature rather than applying non-valent forces, making it bulky in the solid gelatine) However these new couplers turned out to be merely soluble in the melted gelatine. Schneider on his turn had the idea of adding sulfo- or carboxylgroups, making the tail less `fatty´ but still keeping it bulky.
From the moment these two additions to the couplers did not interfere with their dye-forming capacity and fine adjusting and getting it mature for poduction the `New´ (in contrast to the old additive) Agfacolor-Film was born in 1936 with the work of fifty scientists involved. Though before there had been some uncertainty about whether going the reversal (as Kodak) or the neg/pos way.
Fischer tried in vain his part to be honoured by Agfa in the name giving of the new film. I guess at a memorial at the Agfa plant his name was engraved together with those three Agfa men, but am not sure about that.
The Agfacolor era ended in 1991 when after a ten year period of preparation the C-41-type Orwocolor QRS100 was brought to the market. Few months later all coatings at Wolfen were stopped and Orwo was going to be liquidated.
Now back to today. PE, let aside aspects of profitibility (change of process/coating difficulties), could a modern film based on the Agfacolor principle not yield higher resolution than a C-41 film with its oil-based couplers?