Mystery nitrate negatives – we need your help!
via guest contributor and Eastman House volunteer, Kate Wallace
While cleaning out the nitrate holding room at the museum, boxes of safety film and nitrate negatives were discovered that appear to have been donated to the museum in the late 1940’s when the museum was getting ready to open to the public.
The boxes contain negatives that document various aspects of Kodak's progress and activities from the late 1930s through the 1940s. Interesting handwritten notes describe many of the pictures that range from details such as a "small crack in the wall of a basement" to "condition of a safety boot."
There are portraits of employees who won awards for their initiatives to improve the company, along with parts of machines or tools from all different branches such as optics, film processing, and even some war time preparation and production.
Not every negative matches up with a note, however, and many of the images are unidentifiable without knowledge of the film and processes used during this period. Any help in determining what some of these photographs are depicting, or what the machines pictured may have been used for would allow us to continue this documentation that began so many years ago.
We are posting these five images in this post to start. If you can help send us a message, or leave a comment below. Thanks!
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