Ansco Plenachrome 116 Film Which Expired July 1948

Ansco was the

brand name A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create a ...

of a

photographic Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed ...

company based in Binghamton, New York, which produced photographic films, papers and

camera A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

s from the mid-19th century until the 1980s. In the late 1880s, ANSCO's predecessor, Anthony and Scovill, bought the Goodwin Camera & Film Company. Hannibal Goodwin invented flexible photographic film, which should have made Anthony and Scovill the leader in the amateur photography business. However, George Eastman copied the patented process and immediately set out to compete against Anthony and Scovill. The ruthless behavior of Eastman nearly drove the now-named ANSCO out of business, but a settlement in 1905 saved the company from bankruptcy. Eastman Kodak got away cheaply on this legal proceeding. In 1928 AGFA of Germany merged with ANSCO to allow it to compete in the worldwide photographic market like its competitors, Kodak and Zeiss. This joint company added many AGFA cameras and accessories to its sales in the USA as a result. In the months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the US Government seized AGFA-ANSCO. This now government-run business continued to survive as a hostile alien property (under government control into the 1960s). During this period, the organization was renamed GAF (General Aniline & Film Corporation). Throughout the postwar period the concern sold rebadged versions of cameras made by other manufacturers, including Agfa and

Chinon Chinon () is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department, Centre-Val de Loire, France. The traditional province around Chinon, Touraine, became a favorite resort of French kings and their nobles beginning in the late 15th and early 16th centur ...

. A

Minolta was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta Co., Ltd., which is also known simply as Minolta, was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It made the first integrated autofocu ...

-built Ansco model was the first 35 mm camera in outer space, and their film was used in space, too.

History

Early history

The company was founded in 1842 (pre-dating

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

in the photography business) as E. Anthony & Co. (later E. and H. T. Anthony & Company, when Edward Anthony's brother officially joined the business) and became the Anthony & Scovill Co. in 1901, after a merger with the camera business of Scovill Manufacturing (Connecticut), founded by James Mitchell Lamson Scovill and William Henry Scovill. That year the company headquarters relocated to Binghamton, New York. This was already a site of one of Ansco's

photographic paper Photographic paper is a paper coated with a light-sensitive chemical formula, like photographic film, used for making photographic prints. When photographic paper is exposed to light, it captures a latent image that is then developed to form a ...

manufacturing facilities. Just after that, in 1905 it settled a landmark patent infringement case against Eastman Kodak, which had been violating the Goodwin flexible film patent (

Hannibal Goodwin Hannibal Williston Goodwin (April 21, 1822 – December 31, 1900), patented a method for making transparent, flexible roll film out of nitrocellulose film base, which was used in Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, an early machine for viewing mo ...

of Newark, New Jersey) held by Ansco. The settlement received from Eastman Kodak was very small compared to the damage done to Ansco, which already had financial problems as a result of business lost to Eastman Kodak. Ansco logo on a 120 roll film

Merger with Agfa

In 1928 Ansco merged with the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

photo company Agfa to form a corporation named Agfa-Ansco. Later that year that firm and other German-owned chemical firms were merged into a Swiss holding company, Internationale Gesellschaft für Chemische Unternehmungen AG or IG Chemie, that was controlled by Germany's chemical industry conglomerate,

IG Farben Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies— BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa ...

. In 1929 the parent corporation's name was changed to American IG Chemical Corporation or American IG, later renamed

General Aniline & Film The American IG Chemical Corporation, or American IG, for short, was an American holding company incorporated under the Delaware General Corporation Law in April 1929 and headquartered in New York City. It had stakes in General Aniline Works (GAW), ...

, which continued to produce cameras under the Agfa-Ansco name. Agfa Ansco 35mm Film April 1945

During the period before the U. S. entrance into World War II, the Agfa-Ansco business grew enormously, with added manufacturing capacity in paper, film and camera manufacturing. The Agfa-Ansco interests in the U. S. and Binghamton factory were taken over by the U. S. government in 1941 due to its ties with Germany. The Ansco company was merged with General Aniline as

in 1939.

Color film: Anscochrome

Prior to the war, Agfa-Ansco had marketed

Agfacolor An Agfacolor slide dated 1937 from café in Oslo, Norway. An Agfacolor slide dated 1937 from Paris, France. An Agfacolor slide dated 1938 from Hungary. An Agfacolor slide dated 1938 from Zakopane in Poland. An Agfacolor slide dated 1938 fr ...

film made in Germany. To assist the war effort, the company experts used available information to develop a similar product, first called ''Ansco Color'', later ''Anscochrome''. After the war, Anscochrome was widely distributed, but met with limited commercial success in competition with Kodak products. An important marketing feature was its greater speed in comparison to

Kodachrome Kodachrome is the brand name for a color reversal film introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. For many years Kodachrome was widely used ...

. A second advantage was that users, professional or amateur, could process the film in their own darkrooms rather than having to send it away (as with Kodachrome) or use cumbersome re-exposure steps as with Kodak

Ektachrome Ektachrome is a brand name owned by Kodak for a range of transparency, still, and motion picture films previously available in many formats, including 35 mm and sheet sizes to 11 × 14 inch size. Ektachrome has a distinctive look that ...

Post-war business

The company was the last business to be sold as enemy assets to American interests in the 1960s. At that time, a new headquarters was constructed in

Vestal, New York Vestal is a town within Broome County in the Southern Tier of New York, United States, and lies between the Susquehanna River and the Pennsylvania border. As of the 2020 census, the population was 29,110. Vestal is on the southern border of the ...

, adjacent to the new college campus of

Harpur College The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public research university with campuses in Binghamton, Vestal, and Johnson City, New York. It is one of the four university centers in the St ...

(now

Binghamton University The State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton University or SUNY Binghamton) is a public research university with campuses in Binghamton, Vestal, and Johnson City, New York. It is one of the four university centers in the State ...

). This location the one of two remaining pieces of Ansco in the Binghamton area and is currently occupied by the University. The second production building is located at 16 Emma Street and is currently luxury apartments. The Vestal location continued to do business after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

as Ansco until 1967 when the company adopted the parent's name of

(GAF), and a variety of cameras as well as films were sold under this name until the business was shut down in the early 1980s. Briefly in the 1970s, it was the official film of

Disneyland Disneyland is a theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney initially envisi ...

and at this time, actor

Henry Fonda Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was an American actor. He had a career that spanned five decades on Broadway and in Hollywood. He cultivated an everyman screen image in several films considered to be classics. Born and r ...

served as the company's spokesman in television commercials including one that featured

Jodie Foster Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster (born November 19, 1962) is an American actress and filmmaker. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the hon ...

in her first acting role.1971 GAF View Master Commercial with Henry Fonda & Jodie Foster
a
YouTube
/ref> The last Ansco cameras were produced in the early 1990s by a Hong Kong business that bought the rights to the name.

Gallery

File:AnscoMemoryKit.png, Advertisement for Ansco cameras, 1922. File:AnscoCyko.png, Advertisement for Cyko photographic paper, 1922. File:Ansco Anscoflex IMG 2416.jpg, Anscoflex II, pseudo-

twin lens reflex A twin-lens reflex camera (TLR) is a type of camera with two objective lenses of the same focal length. One of the lenses is the photographic objective or "taking lens" (the lens that takes the picture), while the other is used for the viewfinde ...

. File:Advertisement for higher speed Anscochrome film 1955.jpg, Advertisement for new higher speed Anscochrome film 1955. File:Anscochrome slide made in 1960.tif, Anscochrome 35mm slide, 1960, as it appeared after 50 years in storage.

References

{{Authority control Defunct companies based in New York (state) Binghamton, New York IG Farben Photography companies of the United States Companies based in Binghamton, New York Photographic film makers Recipients of the Scientific and Technical Academy Award of Merit Academy Award for Technical Achievement winners 1928 mergers and acquisitions 1939 mergers and acquisitions