Why was Verichrome a B&W Film?

Anscojohn · Aug 3, 2009

Brac said:
When most people used black & white films and most amateurs used rollfilm not 35mm, film manufacturers encouraged them to use orthochromatic films. These were claimed to have greater exposure latitude than pan films, so were considered more suitable for box & simple folding cameras which had very little exposure adjustment capability. Most major manufacturers used "chrome" as part of the name of their ortho rollfilms. So Kodak had Verichrome, Ilford had Selochrome, Agfa had Isochrome etc etc. Those that survived into the 1950's/60's were converted into panchromatic emulsions or withdrawn. It was really only from the late 1930's that "chrome" was also used frequently to indicate colour slide films.

********
Lumiere's Autochrome, color transparency came out in 1907, I think.

dr5chrome · Aug 4, 2009

Ian;

As history serve's me, were not the ADOX films the 1st to brake out of the ortho - to the near panchromatic emulsion?
The first true "pan" films were Trix and PlusX, not verichrome.

dw

Ian Grant said:
Kodak had nothing to do with the origin of Verichrome.

Verichrome was introduced by Wratten & Wainright in the early 1900's as one of the first emulsions with a broader spectral response compared to Orthochromatic films. So as you say True Colour - Veri Chrome The company were at the forefront of Panchromatic research and were later bought by Kodak,

Ian

2F/2F · Aug 4, 2009

jamnut said:
I wonder what developer I should use with this?

I have one of the same.....It has been sitting for a few years, and I had forgotten about it till I saw yer pic.

Why would reduced agitation at a heavy dilution be good for it? Seems to me that this would be one of the worst options, as it would add to the fog and grain that is already there and lower contrast even more.

Ian Grant · Aug 4, 2009

dr5chrome said:
Ian;

As history serve's me, were not the ADOX films the 1st to brake out of the ortho - to the near panchromatic emulsion?
The first true "pan" films were Trix and PlusX, not verichrome.

dw

Surprisingly David, no

Mees and Wratten of Wratten & Wainwright produced the first Panchromatic plate at the same time as Verichrome.

They sold "Verichrome", "Allochrome" and "Wratten Panchromatic" as well as "Bathed" plates from around 1908/9 onwards.

By the 30's most companies made Panchromatic films & plates, Ilford Selopan, an Fine Panchromatic Plates, eveolded into FP2, then 3 and finally FP4. obviously Kodak too as they bought Wratten.

The Adox (EFKE) films we know today weren't made until after WWII, but they were very advanced for the time and the first films to use new thin coating technology, it's a bit of an anomoly to call them old technology, that really is films like Forte based on pr WWII Kodak technology. They are unique in being sigle layer.

Ian

dr5chrome · Aug 5, 2009

..guess I'll have to hit the books, more closely on this subject.

dw

Ian Grant · Aug 5, 2009

In truth David I stumbled on these facts by accident researching older Formulae, there's not much in books. Kodak didn't always make public just why they'd bought a company and what technology they were after

Ian

Ektagraphic · Aug 5, 2009

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
No seriously, why did Kodak used "True Colours" (Veri + Chrome) as a brand for a B&W film?

As someone I know would say.."French....The Language of Champions". I never thought of Verichrome in this way....

Photo Engineer · Aug 5, 2009

There was Verichrome and Verichrome Pan, and GAF used the name Plenachrome for a film, but I have forgotten the spectral sensitivity.

PE

aluk · Aug 5, 2009

Latin + Greek (through French is fun too)

Michel Hardy-Vallée · Aug 6, 2009

Ektagraphic said:
As someone I know would say.."French....The Language of Champions". I never thought of Verichrome in this way....

As Ajuk said, I reasoned via Greek+Latin, not via French!

When you think about it, "ortho-chromatic" is Greek+Greek, but could probably not have been trademarked at that point in history, so Kodak switched one to Latin.

Ian Grant · Aug 6, 2009

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
When you think about it, "ortho-chromatic" is Greek+Greek, but could probably not have been trademarked at that point in history, so Kodak switched one to Latin.

I think you missed my post on the previous page, Wratten & Wainwright came up with the trade name Verichrome for one of their range of colour sensitised plates that included Panchromatic plates, over 20 years before Kodak introducedVerichrome as a roll film. .

C.E.K. Mees had worked for Wratten until Kodak bought the company then became Head of Research in Rochester for Kodak, he had a classic English Public School education (expensive Private school in English terminology) and would have learnt Latin and most probably Greek, they were compulsory subjects.

Ian

CBG · Aug 6, 2009

I had heard somewhere, that Mees I think, was approached by Kodak with a job offer, and that Mees was unwilling to jump ship, so George Eastman bought the Wratten company to get him. I have no idea how accurate that story is.

aldevo · Aug 6, 2009

Ian Grant said:
Surprisingly David, no

Mees and Wratten of Wratten & Wainwright produced the first Panchromatic plate at the same time as Verichrome.

They sold "Verichrome", "Allochrome" and "Wratten Panchromatic" as well as "Bathed" plates from around 1908/9 onwards.

By the 30's most companies made Panchromatic films & plates, Ilford Selopan, an Fine Panchromatic Plates, eveolded into FP2, then 3 and finally FP4. obviously Kodak too as they bought Wratten.

The Adox (EFKE) films we know today weren't made until after WWII, but they were very advanced for the time and the first films to use new thin coating technology, it's a bit of an anomoly to call them old technology, that really is films like Forte based on pr WWII Kodak technology. They are unique in being sigle layer.

Ian

Yes, IIRC Efke KB14 was the first "thin-film" emulsion and it accidentally resulted from the consqeuence of a coating accident whereby Efke applied far too thick a coating of gelatin during a run and they tried to salvage the run by scraping off what they could. At least that's the story in the "Film Developer's Cookbook".

It all sounds a bit too serendipitous to be true.

Fortepan emulsions were (with the possible exception of Fortepan 400) minor evolutions of pre-WWII Kodak thick-film emulsion technology. Fortepan 200 (and its Bergger and retail-labeled counterparts) is said to be a very close match for Kodak Super-XX.

Ian Grant · Aug 6, 2009

CBG said:
I had heard somewhere, that Mees I think, was approached by Kodak with a job offer, and that Mees was unwilling to jump ship, so George Eastman bought the Wratten company to get him. I have no idea how accurate that story is.

It would appear that way, but Eastman wanted Mees & the technology, and from what Ron (PE) has said about Mees at Kodak, he was very much the old style English Public School gentleman. He was also a shareholder of Wratten & Wainwright so for a variety of reasons the company continued trading as a separate division within Kodak Ltd (UK).

It's worth mentioning that Ilford told us during a factory tour that they make their Mutigrade filters on their small emulsion coating line used for testing emulsion & research. Wratten probably did the same coating filters onto Glass plates on their normal plate coating machinery to begin with.

Ian

Mark Antony · Aug 6, 2009

It is my understanding also that Kodak bought Wratten to obtain the services of C.E.K Mees. He had been instrumental in producing Panchromatic emulsions in 1908 using dyes to modify sensitivity, he built on the work of Dr Vogel in the 1890's I think.
Mark

Mark Layne · Aug 6, 2009

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
No seriously, why did Kodak used "True Colours" (Veri + Chrome) as a brand for a B&W film?

I've always been confused by that name, provided that now all the films/process that end in -chrome are for color images: Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Cibachrome, etc.

Anybody has fond memories of that discontinued film? I think I was born not long before they pulled it out of the shelves, so it's something I've forever missed.

And Ilford Selochrome?

Ian Grant · Aug 6, 2009

In the UK Ilford, Gem and Imperial joined forces to form a new Joint Company in 1920/1 - Selo Ltd, building a new factory in Ilford, Essex, Ilford Ltd later absorbed Selo and the associated companies. This was to compete against Kodak and pool research and development of roll films. Later the safety film base was manufactured by Dupont.

The term Selo or Sello denotes cellulose based film. Here in the UK and EU we we also have a 3M brand Sellotape, the clear cellulose based sticking tape that everyone uses.

Ian

cmacd123 · Aug 6, 2009

CBG said:
I had heard somewhere, that Mees I think, was approached by Kodak with a job offer, and that Mees was unwilling to jump ship, so George Eastman bought the Wratten company to get him. I have no idea how accurate that story is.

IN Mees boook, he says that Eastman wanted him, but he figured that that would be unfair to his colegues at W&R so he persuaded Eastman to buy out the company, which probably was hung on to Kodak Limited for convenience. The staff all being hired in one form or another by Kodak, and Mees heading up Kodak's research labs.

cmacd123 · Aug 6, 2009

aldevo said:
Yes, IIRC Efke KB14 was the first "thin-film" emulsion and it accidentally resulted from the consqeuence of a coating accident whereby Efke applied far too thick a coating of gelatin during a run and they tried to salvage the run by scraping off what they could.

SInce KB 14 predates the purchase of the Adox Technology by Yugoslavia to form what became the EFKE group. ...

Adox (the orginal one) was set up to produce modern for the time films and was bought up by Dupont. Who then sold it without the trademarks, which they used for X-ray products) The Current holders of the Adox trademarks obtained them when Dupont let them lapse.

I imagine that the very thin emulsion was a very deliberate design decison, as was the coating of an Anti Halo dye on the BACK of even the 35mm film. Something that is still done with the last roll of ADOX brand KB25 film I obtained even though it is now on a polyester base.

burkie · Aug 7, 2009

Hi All ,
Just came across this post re Ilford Selochrome & Kodak Verichrome .

I posted a few months ago that I had found an unexposed roll of Selochrome in a box camera in a small village near me in Ireland,the film turned out to have been in the camera for 65yrs .It didn't develop,The people in Ilford were very helpful.

Last week on returning to the same village I noticed a 1930 Box Brownie 2 (F)in the window of a publican I knew,and saw it had film in it(7shots exposed)the camera had jammed.
It was his late mothers camera & I developed it in ID11 for 7.5 min.

I got three perfect negs !!! plus one that seemed to be blurred by a slip of the camera.The rest were unexposed

Dating the exposures by the people in the shots -the current owners late father ,grandparents & cousins it was taken in 1958-9.
I researched Verichrome pan & it came out in 1957.

I'll see if I can get the negs scanned and with permission post them here.
Apparently as you have already said it was a film for point & shoot cameras and had a long shelf life ,it also had a long latent image life.
I scanned the film leader but I cant get it from "My pictures" to the post any help appreciated.

Mark Antony · Aug 7, 2009

I just processed a Roll of Selochrome from 1967 this evening....
http://photo-utopia.blogspot.com/2009/08/found-film-ilford-selochrome.html

Mark

wogster · Aug 7, 2009

Michel Hardy-Vallée said:
No seriously, why did Kodak used "True Colours" (Veri + Chrome) as a brand for a B&W film?

I've always been confused by that name, provided that now all the films/process that end in -chrome are for color images: Kodachrome, Ektachrome, Cibachrome, etc.

Anybody has fond memories of that discontinued film? I think I was born not long before they pulled it out of the shelves, so it's something I've forever missed.

To backtrack and deal with the initial posting, I think if you look at the history, Verichrome preceded the tradition of using the term chrome to mean reversal colour films.

Ian Grant · Aug 8, 2009

Paul your history is apalling

No it's contemporary with the early Colour Reversal film too which used the word Chrome

Autochrome 1907
Verichrome - 1907/8

Ian

wogster · Aug 8, 2009

Ian Grant said:
Paul your history is apalling

No it's contemporary with the early Colour Reversal film too which used the word Chrome

Autochrome 1907
Verichrome - 1907/8

Ian

I said it predated the tradition of using chrome to refer to reversal colour films, not that it predated any use of the term chrome referring to any colour reversal film. These days nobody would call a black and white negative film chrome, even if the term fit, because the tradition of only referring to colour reversal films as chromes is now firmly entrenched. This is why I think if anything usurps the name Kodachrome it will be a colour reversal film.

Ian Grant · Aug 8, 2009

wogster said:
I said it predated the tradition of using chrome to refer to reversal colour films, not that it predated any use of the term chrome referring to any colour reversal film.

Autocrome was a Colour Reversal film/Reversal Colour film, although it used B&W Reversal processing

So Autochrome started the tradition for the use of Chrome for Colour transparencies.

Ian

Why was Verichrome a B&W Film?

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