Why is color reversal film commonly known as "chrome"?

Gerald C Koch said:

To clear up the confusion between the element chromium and color dyes. The element was so named because of the brilliant colors of its compounds. For example chrome alum solutions can appear as either purple or green. Potassium chromate solutions are yellow in color. In fact I cannot think of a chromium compound that isn't colored.

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+1

and see 1.1 (and example) in...

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/chrome

Here in Sweden we say Diafilm or just Dia generally. Very rarely you hear Diapositiv, or "E6". Never "Chrome".

slides in the UK. We have to pander to everyone else by using chromes or positives or transparencies or diapositives.

Did you know that studies of the Sami languages of Norway, Sweden and Finland, conclude that the languages have anywhere from 180 snow- and ice-related words and as many as 300 different words for types of snow, tracks in snow, and conditions of the use of snow.

Slides have a way to go yet...

Ian Grant said:

The first colour transparency films with chrome in the name were made by the the Lumière brothers in France in 1903, it has nothing to do with Chromogenic.

It was also used by Wratten and Wainwright their B&W Verichrome & Allochrome product names, also Ilford Selochrome, it's just saying that the films have a wide chromatic range.

The modern use is just slang for slide films which all had chrome at the end of their name.

Ian

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Autochrome Lumière is an early color photography process, patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers it was the principal color photography process before subtractive color film in the mid-1930s. it used a random mosaic of microscopic grains of potato starch, the glass plate was reversal-processed into a positive transparency. When the finished image was viewed by transmitted light, each bit of the silver image acted as a micro-filter, allowing more or less light to pass through the corresponding colored starch grain, recreating the original proportions of the three colors. Autochrome pre-dates names like Kodachrome, which did not come into existence until 1935.

Cybertrash said:

Here in Sweden we say Diafilm or just Dia generally. Very rarely you hear Diapositiv, or "E6". Never "Chrome".

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+1 for Finland. Diafilmi, diakuva or dia.

bentbikr said:

+1 for Finland. Diafilmi, diakuva or dia.

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Welcome to APUG

Well, here is the choices Kodak had for naming their pos. film.
brome, comb, Crome, dome, foam, gnome, holm, Holme, hom, home, Jerome, loam, Nome, ohm, om, roam, Rome, tome,chrome.

mike c said:

Well, here is the choices Kodak had for naming their pos. film.
brome, comb, Crome, dome, foam, gnome, holm, Holme, hom, home, Jerome, loam, Nome, ohm, om, roam, Rome, tome,chrome.

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And then some!

In Spain Spanish, it is called "diapositiva".

wiltw said:

Autochrome pre-dates names like Kodachrome, which did not come into existence until 1935.

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Actually, Kodachrome was first used as the name of an earlier color process. I think it was around 1922.

Okay,

As mentioned by other posters to this thread, "chrome" had become a synonym for "color" because many colorful pigments were chromium compounds.

Since EK had created a color motion-picture technology they had already named "Kodacolor" when their iconic non-substantive color reversal film hit the market, the latter was named "Kodachrome". Later they would introduce a color negative film, and, with the old Kodacolor movie system long-abandoned, they "recycled" the Kodacolor trademark for its new color-negative still camera film.

I'm thinking that at this point, "color" and "chrome" were still interchangeable. Agfacolor Neu, Ansco Color, and Dynacolor were all films that yielded a positive image on the original film that had been in the camera.

As Kodacolor film became popular, and as EK had come to so dominate the market, their competitors were more or less "forced" to the model of -chrome for reversal films and -color for negative films, as the 400-pound yellow gorilla did.

Now, I'm hoping people out there are asking "What about Verichrome and Plenachrome?". Well, the earliest silver halide-based photographic films were sensitive almost exclusively to blue light. To get good exposure of anything in the scene that was not blue (i.e., anything alive, save blueberries and bluebonnets), one needed to overexpose to compensate, essentially forcing the negative to show some response to the light that was not blue (note that all U.S. Civil War photos shot with silver have skies that are stark white).

When orthochromatic film (good sensitivity to green, and a little sensitivity to red) was introduced, Verichrome and Plenachrome (for young readers - these were black-and-white films) indicated that the films were sensitive to colors other than blue. The older films (blue-sensitive) were briefly referred to as "regular", but were soon forgotten, at least for snapshooters.

Of course, orthochromatic films would give way to panchromatic films (sensitive to the entire visible spectrum), and Verichriome was replaced with Verichrome Pan in 1956 (Sears continued to sell Tower Ortho to snapshooters, insanely cheap, whilst introducing a more expensive Pan on its own label, for a few more years).

Note that to produce an acceptable color image, any general-purpose color film, by definition, had to be panchromatic.

Meh. I never use 'chrome' to describe it. "Tranny [film]" works just fine here in Australia...

1L6E6VHF said:

Okay,

As mentioned by other posters to this thread, "chrome" had become a synonym for "color" because many colorful pigments were chromium compounds.

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I don't think that's why. The word "chrome" is from the Greek word chroma, which means color.
Chromium the metal is named for the colorful pigments which can be made from it.

Poisson Du Jour said:

Meh. I never use 'chrome' to describe it. "Tranny [film]" works just fine here in Australia...

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LOL. Up here (USA), if you were to say "tranny film", they will think it must be a movie with "gender bender" characters.

FSU here. Not a Florida, but sixth part of land on Earth.
We aren't using chrome for positive film. It is called as the slide.
And diafilm was common as family entertainment. It was rolls of positive film with children stories mostly, projected on the wall at home. We have one original one here in Canada now with original diafilms.
This is scanned one, with Soviet propaganda.
http://diafilmy.su/3888-vosstanie-v-tyurme.html

1L6E6VHF said:

LOL. Up here (USA), if you were to say "tranny film", they will think it must be a movie with "gender bender" characters.

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When I first came across the term "tranny" here at Apug I was puzzled and at first thought in that direction.

1L6E6VHF said:

Since EK had created a color motion-picture technology they had already named "Kodacolor" when their iconic non-substantive color reversal film hit the market, the latter was named "Kodachrome".

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This is one of the most convincing explanations up until now.

Thanks everyone for your takes on the story.


Flavio