Who owns or possesses all the old Tetenal recipes now?

Ian Grant

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Tetenal were probably the second oldest photographic company, the oldest was Johnsons of Hendon who supplied Fox Talbot with Silver Nitrate etc, and went on to be a large scale manufacturer of photo chemicals, as well as dye couplers, until the early 1960s.

Some of Tetenal's formulae were commercial variants of developers from people like Willi Beutler, in a similar way Perutz sold developers formulated by Hans Windisch.

Ian
 

Agulliver

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Johnsons of Hendon started way back in the 1770s as precious metal assayers and chemists. As I have worked in the area for 26 years I've taken an interest and from what I recall the company was bought by asset strippers in the early 70s, who sold much of the infrastructure and stopped chemical manufacture. before Johnsons passed on to Eumig and limping along into the late 80s before merging with Photopia. When the last of the NW London buildings was closed, it was said to be a treasure trove of old laboratory equipment etc.

The name survives on some chemistry products still produced today but the company was wound up as recently as 2019.

As for Tetenal, someone must own the rights to the recipes. And there must be a lot of them.
 

Ian Grant

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Johnson of Hendon had become a separate company to the precious metal company Johnson Mathey, I'm not sure when. In the severe downturn of business and recession of the early 1960s they closed their equipment and chemical manufacturing factories. They had made B&W and Colour developing agents, colour couplers, etc, I have a bottle of Ilford Amidol which says Johnsons in brackets.

They retained their range of photo chemistry and their wholesale side., until, as mentioned above, they were bought and asset stripped in 1972. Some employees under Adrian Willis, & Pop Pippard the technical director, obtained the right to the formulae and the "Scales" brand and formed Photo Technolgywhich later merged with Paterson.

A number of UK photo-companies closed in the early 1960s recession.

Ian
 

MattKing

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In many cases, it isn't the recipe that is proprietary - it is the means and mode of manufacture of the commercial product.
 

Ian Grant

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MattKing said:
In many cases, it isn't the recipe that is proprietary - it is the means and mode of manufacture of the commercial product.
Click to expand...

It’s also the Trade names (marks). Before Agfa pulled out of the general photographic market, they had already failed to renew trade names like Rodinal. An unscrupulous US company was buying Calbe R09 and re-bottling it as Rodinal, with labelling the same colour and type style as Agfa.

More recently there was the Kodak debacle where Kodak Alaris sold the chemistry rights to Sino Promise, when they pulled out the rights reverted to Eastman Kodak. At some point the trade names of some Kodak chemistry lapsed and were not renewed. Amongst these were D76, it's a few weeks since I looked but Xtol had been renewed. I don't know which others were lost.

Ian
 

Formulahunter

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snusmumriken said:
Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Just take into accou t that adox just braught tree clones of former tetnal products to the market...

Also TT used to produce most if not all kodak chemistry until the mid 2010s.
So the one who has TT's recipes also has all of kodaks. Including the original hc 110.
 

Film-Niko

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The recipes aren't protected (anymore) by any kind of rights or patents.
Those who have produced the chemistry at Tetenal know the recipes. And I guess some of them are happy to continue being employed and working in their original profession: As both Adox and Calbe have meanwhile introduced former Tetenal products, I assume that former Tetenal chemists are now working there.
 
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