100 years Null-Serie

[Roland Zwiers]

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Another later copy of a 1917 negative

In this filmstrip we see the same negative copied twice, at two different densities.

At A we see the date 1914, but I hesitate if this is correct. It may well be 1917 in the Black Forest.

B-B-B-B suggests that the original negatives were situated well within the perforations, but this was not the case.
So this suggests that the copied negatives are slightly reduced in size.
We can observe the familiar C-C-C-C dimensions discussed before.
I forgot to use the D. This was reserved for the wide spaces in between the negatives.
At E we can see that the negatives have been copied at Agfa Isopan F film.
This film must have been introduced in the 1930s.

To be continued!

Roland
 

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[BernardC]

One thing to note is that if the earlier negs are copies, they would have likely been done via an inter-positive, or via a paper print. The "ISOPAN F" negs shown above are obviously copies of a positive, or else the edge lettering would be inverted (clear on black).

This doesn't add much to the conversation, because inter-negatives and inter-positive would have been common in the German cinema industry in the 1920s. Inter-positives are struck for editing and for release prints, and inter-negatives are used for any film that is widely distributed (because original camera negatives aren't sturdy enough to be copied hundreds of times).

[SpotmaticSP]

Roland, you already noticed that some boundaries between negatives are not sharp. I'm almost sure that this is caused by using a film without anti-halation layer.

[Roland Zwiers]

BernardC and SpotmaticSP,

Thank you for your replies!

In the 1910s and 1920s there were indeed many types of perforated 35mm fim for the cinema industry.
The 35mm cine negative film (suitable for Leica photography) was just one type.   
The production of films for copying was much bigger as hundreds of cinemas would require a cine positive copy from one and the same cine negative film.

I am not sure why some negatives have unsharp bounderies.
All suggestions are welcome!
It may also be a feature of the prototype camera in use.
Or even a feature of the copying set-up. 

Note that pictures that we can identify as being 1914 pictures, usually sink through the perforations.
So this may be a feature of the Ur-Leica.

With 1917 Oskar Barnack pictures the images are exactly within the perforations.
This may indicate that in 1917 Barnack was using an improved prototype.

In a later slide I will include information about German DIN-norms as to the perforation of cine negative and cine positive film.
In Germany in the period 1914-1926 DIN-norms were more important that the international standards set by Bell & Howell.

Roland 

 

 

 

 

[Roland Zwiers]

Here I have put together the seven film-strips that I could find of the 1914 Zeppelin pictures.
In a previous slide I showed Oskar Barnack's work notes (Werkstattbuch) of March-April 1914 that refer to 'Luftschiff' = Zeppelin

At A one can see two different dates: 1913 and 1914. But the year 1913 near negative 1913 is corrected by pencil in 1914.
At B there is a red marking again, presumably so as to select this negative for enlargement.
At C-C-C-C  we have the cut-off corners again for the two-negative combination. 
But this time most film-strips have three negatives!
At D one can see that the images sink through the perforations.
This is the case with all these film-strips and presumably a fearture of the Ur-Leica.

For this type of photography it was well-known that the film had to be sensitive to the colours yellow and green.
i have discussed this in a previous slide.
So I infer that Oskar barnack self-sentisized the film in an eosin-bath before the flight.
In addition the sensitivity to yellow and green depended on the use of an additional yellow filter.
Otherwise the natural over-sensitivity of the film to blue and violet would still dominate. 

Attaching a yellow filter to the 1:4,5 f=42mm Mikro-Summar was asking for trouble.
So I infer that unsharpness or shading in some corners of the negatives was due to the weight and/or improper mounting of the yellow filter on the lens.
Rather than the insufficient image circle of the 1:3,5 f=50mm Kino-Tessar.

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[Roland Zwiers]

What I don't understand with the Zeppelin film is the numbering of the negatives.

One can see the 20 numbers:

71-72-73-74-75-76-77-78

80-81-82-83-84-85-86- -88

130- - 135- -137-138

but not in a logical sequence.

If the numbers 71-78 were taken one after the other on the same film, why are they not adjacent on the film-strips?
Does this show that these film-strips are again copies from nitro-cellulose based negatives?

 

[Roland Zwiers]

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This film-strip has several unexpected features.

At A one can see cut-outs that are steeper and deeper than the ones we have seen before.
There is still a C-C-C-C shape with the cut-off corners, but this time the dimensions include part of a third negative.
This suggests the use of another copying or enlarging device.

At B-B-B one can see that the images remain within the perforations, but at D this is not the case.
Is the negative copied at D an older Ur-Leica negative?

From the negatives 4 and 102 one can see that the subject matter is nearly identical.
Even the location seems identical.
Did Oskar Barnack visit this location on two separate occasions for taking similar pictures?
When doing copying work, did he copy these two negatives together for his archive?
How to explain the big gap between #4 and #102? 

 

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[Roland Zwiers]

This is how far I can come today 🙂
In 2023 I have made some more pictures of the Oskar Barnack negatives in the Leitz Archive, but these can wait for the time being.
I feel I have raised enough questions for further discussion.
And I hope that the coming LSI-visit to the Leitz Archive wil lead to fruifull cooperation for future research.
This is a new research area and there is still a lot of work to do! 

I still promised to come back on the issue of perforation.

The image below shows the German DIN-norms of 1922 for the perforation of cine negative and cine positive film.
I owe these documents to Manfred Gill of the Agfa Museum in Wolfen.
These norms were valid in Germany at the time of the Null-Serie!

It would be interesting to find out what the German DIN-norms were in 1914.
Very likely the extensive contemporary literature on cinematography may be of help.

To be continued.

Roland

 

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[Carlos cruz]

 

17 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

It would be interesting to find out what the German DIN-norms were in 1914.
Very likely the extensive contemporary literature on cinematography may be of help.

To

As DIN started off in May 1917, probably there was no national standard before and industry standard (BH or other) was accepted. The 1922 DIN slips you provided could have been first time that these norms were officially recognised. That’s just a guess, I wish I could be of more help, but my german skills are well below rusty. From some additional reading BH became standard before the Great War since Edison applied for patent and formed monopoly, by 1917 Society of motion picture engineers confirmed de facto status of 35 mm films. My guess is that manufacturers of 35mm film in Germany were already operating on this standard for decades and DIN could only acknowledge the status quo. The whole perforation route I tried to follow can be actually a dead end. As a decision to build a still camera system on 35 mm cine format would probably be made only after investors were sure that this standard was here to stay. 35mm was already part of big cine industry with cameras, projectors, developing and copying rigs. Just looking at number of cinemas in interwar Europe gives us a hint that there was no way to change the standard. 
 

Guesses for the reason behind unsharp borders can find its’ source in copying regime. There are two ways around copying negative to negative (via internegative) it can be contact printed like with Leitz contraption ELDIA, lack of uniform pressure can be a reason behind unsharp borders (in later years to counteract this effect wet printing was preferred) the other route was optical printing where you re-photographed the negative.

On 6/27/2025 at 11:17 AM, Roland Zwiers said:

At C  we see factory numbering in the perforation area.
This suggests that this negative was copied after 1931 or so.

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(Like beoon) and this could be artifact of the taking lens, or again lack of flatness of the negative. When we look at the above picture we can see example of rephotographed neg or maybe paper prints(?) with most of possible mistakes. 

I rather believe in negative curl being source of unsharp borders as they rather happen on top and bottom and rarely occur on the sides. For cinema it wasn’t such a big problem as films were kept in rolls and this way of storing counteracted curling with shorter strips in photography the problem wasn’t probably recognised early enough.

Edited June 28 by Carlos cruz

[Roland Zwiers]

Carlos,

These are very interesting observations!

Yes, I forgot that DIN originated during the 1914-1918 war. Germany was fighting on two fronts and because of the British naval blockade it had to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Standardisation was one way out.

Superior aerial reconnaissance photography another. Here we encounter again the innovative Fliegercamera by Oskar Messter in combination with the Agfa Fliegerfilms and on the other hand the high quality image circle of the Tessar lens at full 1:4,5 lens opening. 

From contemporary literature on photography and cinematography I infer that in 1914 Agfa did not produce the best cine negative film. Kodak must still have produced the best overall film. One French film had higher colour sensitivity (at the cost of other features), one British film had a finer grain. Before August 1914 Kodak was available on the German market. For the British and French films I could not find advertising in German periodicals on cinematography.

So what films did Oskar Barnack and Ernst Leitz II use up to August 1914 (and the additional months for finishing existing stocks)?

Would they have used the locally produced Agfa and Goerz films? Or the higher quality Kodak? Here a possible difference in perforations could still offer clues.

Note that in 1914 perforating 35mm film was an additional service that required an additional fee. The customer could do it himself. The factory could do it on request. There were many third parties as well. What equipment was used in Germany for perforating 35mm films. Was this equipment imported from the USA or locally produced? I still have to research this.

It is not unlikely that Oskar Barnack also experimented with cheap left-overs of 35mm film.

Film producers aimed at lengths of 100-120 meter without defects. These lengths could be sold at the highest price per meter to film makers like Charlie Chaplin and Oskar Messter. As soon as the lengths were shorter and/or included defects, the price per meter would drop dramatically. Short left-overs could not serve for cinematography at all, but were very useful for Ur-Leica experiments!

Now I infer that with imported films (American, British, French) only the highest quality would have been imported, so the lengths of 100-120 meter. No way to obtain cheap left-overs! If the extreme cheapness of 35mm film motivated Oskar Barnack, then in 1914 he may we'll have used locally produced remnants of 35mm film. 

In 1915-1918 he had no choice but to use 35mm film Agfa. And then he must have had the good luck of obtaining remnants of the Agfa Fliegerfilms, that proved to be well-suited for Leica photography, at the cost of poor keeping properties. Was this good luck related to Leitz producing parts for the Oskar Messter Fliegercamera?

To be continued.

Roland 

 

 

 

 

[willeica]

47 minutes ago, Roland Zwiers said:

Carlos,

These are very interesting observations!

Yes, I forgot that DIN originated during the 1914-1918 war. Germany was fighting on two fronts and because of the British naval blockade it had to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Standardisation was one way out.

Superior aerial reconnaissance photography another. Here we encounter again the innovative Fliegercamera by Oskar Messter in combination with the Agfa Fliegerfilms and on the other hand the high quality image circle of the Tessar lens at full 1:4,5 lens opening. 

From contemporary literature on photography and cinematography I infer that in 1914 Agfa did not produce the best cine negative film. Kodak must still have produced the best overall film. One French film had higher colour sensitivity (at the cost of other features), one British film had a finer grain. Before August 1914 Kodak was available on the German market. For the British and French films I could not find advertising in German periodicals on cinematography.

So what films did Oskar Barnack and Ernst Leitz II use up to August 1914 (and the additional months for finishing existing stocks)?

Would they have used the locally produced Agfa and Goerz films? Or the higher quality Kodak? Here a possible difference in perforations could still offer clues.

Note that in 1914 perforating 35mm film was an additional service that required an additional fee. The customer could do it himself. The factory could do it on request. There were many third parties as well. What equipment was used in Germany for perforating 35mm films. Was this equipment imported from the USA or locally produced? I still have to research this.

It is not unlikely that Oskar Barnack also experimented with cheap left-overs of 35mm film.

Film producers aimed at lengths of 100-120 meter without defects. These lengths could be sold at the highest price per meter to film makers like Charlie Chaplin and Oskar Messter. As soon as the lengths were shorter and/or included defects, the price per meter would drop dramatically. Short left-overs could not serve for cinematography at all, but were very useful for Ur-Leica experiments!

Now I infer that with imported films (American, British, French) only the highest quality would have been imported, so the lengths of 100-120 meter. No way to obtain cheap left-overs! If the extreme cheapness of 35mm film motivated Oskar Barnack, then in 1914 he may we'll have used locally produced remnants of 35mm film. 

In 1915-1918 he had no choice but to use 35mm film Agfa. And then he must have had the good luck of obtaining remnants of the Agfa Fliegerfilms, that proved to be well-suited for Leica photography, at the cost of poor keeping properties. Was this good luck related to Leitz producing parts for the Oskar Messter Fliegercamera?

To be continued.

Roland 

 

 

 

 

I was in the Leica Archive late on Friday afternoon along with Alan Stokes (beoon). We could not visit earlier than that as Leica AG had 800 guests many of whom were doing Archive tours. All of my group had been in the archive before, but people had various issues that they wanted to check. I had discussed with the archive staff about whether the negatives were catalogued as regards source etc. It seems that the writing on the negatives was done a long time ago and can only be regarded as semi-reliable at this stage. there has been bo recent comprehensive and reliable cataloguing. One of the biggest issues is whether any of what they have are from films that were used in the Ur-Leica or other early prototypes and also what was copied later using various methods including the ELDIA, which was available from about 1927 onwards. They now have somebody in the archive who is an expert on film and darkroom techniques. In addition they have a senior person who is sorting out their photograph collection generally. I will probably travel to Wetzlar, perhaps next winter, to see what might be done to start an identification/cataloguing process for the early stuff. At the moment we are only guessing about what they have.

Nobody I spoke to in Wetzlar believes that a yellow filter was used with the UR-Leica, but we all know that after 1925 screw and clamp on yellow filters did become available for the Leica I Model A. There is a comprehensive table of those in Laney's book and I have a collection of such filters. What happened between 1914 and 1925 is anyone's guess.

William 

[Roland Zwiers]

13 minutes ago, willeica said:

I was in the Leica Archive late on Friday afternoon along with Alan Stokes (beoon). We could not visit earlier than that as Leica AG had 800 guests many of whom were doing Archive tours. All of my group had been in the archive before, but people had various issues that they wanted to check. I had discussed with the archive staff about whether the negatives were catalogued as regards source etc. It seems that the writing on the negatives was done a long time ago and can only be regarded as semi-reliable at this stage. there has been bo recent comprehensive and reliable cataloguing. One of the biggest issues is whether any of what they have are from films that were used in the Ur-Leica or other early prototypes and also what was copied later using various methods including the ELDIA, which was available from about 1927 onwards. They now have somebody in the archive who is an expert on film and darkroom techniques. In addition they have a senior person who is sorting out their photograph collection generally. I will probably travel to Wetzlar, perhaps next winter, to see what might be done to start an identification/cataloguing process for the early stuff. At the moment we are only guessing about what they have.

Nobody I spoke to in Wetzlar believes that a yellow filter was used with the UR-Leica, but we all know that after 1925 screw and clamp on yellow filters did become available for the Leica I Model A. There is a comprehensive table of those in Laney's book and I have a collection of such filters. What happened between 1914 and 1925 is anyone's guess.

William 

William,

Thank you for this information!

I can readily see that the Ur-Leica in combination with the cover on the 1:4.5 f=42mm Mikro Summar was not well equipped for an external yellow filter.

Yet, how to explain the many pre-1925 experiments by Oskar Barnack with colour-sensitive film?

These results could only be obtained by a colour -sensitized black-and-white film in combination with a yellow filter! Otherwise the predominant sensitivity of the film for violet and blue would spoil the experiments. Contemporary literature is explicit about this.

To be continued.

Roland 

[willeica]

39 minutes ago, Roland Zwiers said:

William,

Thank you for this information!

I can readily see that the Ur-Leica in combination with the cover on the 1:4.5 f=42mm Mikro Summar was not well equipped for an external yellow filter.

Yet, how to explain the many pre-1925 experiments by Oskar Barnack with colour-sensitive film?

These results could only be obtained by a colour -sensitized black-and-white film in combination with a yellow filter! Otherwise the predominant sensitivity of the film for violet and blue would spoil the experiments. Contemporary literature is explicit about this.

To be continued.

Roland 

Roland, we have to take our time on this one. Even though I am well known in Wetzlar, I have to build up trust about this particular collection which is at the heart of the development of the Leica camera. The archive has the usual issues with such archives in that collections have come from all over the place and that a former museum set up by Leitz/Leica seems to have been abandoned at some stage. There are museum cards around, but these are not connected to the items. They have now employed some excellent professional people, but the situation is not much different to that in other places. Here in Dublin I've been asked to give a talk about our National Photographic Archive which contains about 5.5 million photographs. Only 50 - 60 K of this items have been digitised and to find anything you have to rely on stuff who are excellent, but are not particularly knowledgeable about photography. I am having some historical photos scanned for the first time ever here in Dublin as part of that and I am calling my talk 'Treasures of the National Photographic Archive- Seen and Unseen'. The same applies to the archive in Wetzlar which needs to be organised across the board. They have recently brought in some excellent professional staff into the Leica Archive, but a lot remains to be done. I would agree that anything done by Barnack in the development of the Leica and Leica photography is critically core to the archive, but we have to take little steps at first. I would like to see the archive organised so that legitimate researchers can get the material that they want easily and without too much fuss, but we have to give our friends in the archive time and space to develop their systems. 

I'll leave it at that.

William 

[Roland Zwiers]

William,

Thank you so much!

Can you bring me in contact with these new professionals at the Leitz Archive? I have been doing this research on early colour photography for some eight years now, especially focusing on early literature from the 1890s to the 1920s. I am sure that I can bring in relevant expertise.

Roland 

 

[BernardC]

3 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

Film producers aimed at lengths of 100-120 meter without defects. These lengths could be sold at the highest price per meter to film makers like Charlie Chaplin and Oskar Messter. As soon as the lengths were shorter and/or included defects, the price per meter would drop dramatically. Short left-overs could not serve for cinematography at all, but were very useful for Ur-Leica experiments!

Now I infer that with imported films (American, British, French) only the highest quality would have been imported, so the lengths of 100-120 meter. No way to obtain cheap left-overs! If the extreme cheapness of 35mm film motivated Oskar Barnack, then in 1914 he may we'll have used locally produced remnants of 35mm film. 

Your source is probably referring to "short ends," which are unexposed leftover negative stock from motion picture production. This happens when there isn't enough film in the camera for the next shot; the exposed roll is sent to the lab for processing, and the unexposed "short end" is saved. These short ends can be used for shots that require less footage (cut to a clock ticking...), and anything left after production is sold. The amount of film stock needed for a Leica corresponds to 3 or 4 seconds of motion picture run time (assuming 18 or 24 fps in the silent era), so these short rolls would have been readily available at the time.

What's interesting to me is that the rolls were colour-sensitized. Motion picture stock from that era would have been blue-sensitive (orthochromatic), which required heavy makeup and other tricks in order to look right in the finished motion pictures. I've read about "hyper-sensitization" for astro photography, which had to be exposed and processed quickly, so I assume that the colour-sensitization process was similarly unstable and had to be shot and exposed within a few days.

[Carlos cruz]

3 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

So what films did Oskar Barnack and Ernst Leitz II use up to August 1914 (and the additional months for finishing existing stocks)?

I am afraid that again I will only muddle the general picture and give us more questions and doubts than straight answers.

 Film is usually produced in wide rolls, usually at least  305 m long, that’s where you have to cover base with emulsion in single or multiple layers in total darkness, and cut it to demanded widths 5x4, 9x12, 120, 35, 16 adding perforation, paper backing, spools etc. By 1914 I believe that most European countries were self sufficient re manufacturing film base, emulsion and already have adopted 35mm BH standard (just few hours train ride from Wetzlar on türkenstrasse in Munich first German camera following BH standard was developed in 1917) I don’t think that there was place for more than one manufacturer who provided the whole service. Usually you had one big producer who supplied manufacturing and some smaller enterprises that would buy from them cut, packed and market it at slightly inflated prices. The emulsion recipes and developing techniques probably varied across the major players. According to legends the film coming from the middle of the huge roll is usually the best with most uniform emulsion layer. There was not one film speed scale that everyone agreed on.   (I remember a nice advice for 1920’s  cine amateurs how to develop night/interior scenes- put a drop of mercury and in developing tank with film and let evaporate in warm place) Probably major buyer of photographic stock was cinema, so raw stock was perforated and depending on use of material was cut and packed in 305 m cans for cinema copies, 122 or 60 m for shooting in cameras.  I think that Leica had to buy multiple rolls of at least 60m for testing. 
Don’t know enough about history of Leica but I vaguely remember that film cartridge as we know today (ixmoo etc) wasn’t there at the beginning, it probably started with simple spools, something similar to so called day load spools used in motion pictures. Reading through this thread it occurred to me that actually film cartridges were very important discovery that facilitated advent of 35mm photography. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the notes concerning negatives didn’t concern camera/lens but rather observations on film types and developing techniques. Once you had a lightproof box that could transport film by repeating increments and expose it through timed slit  to light coming from the best lens you could afford to make (whole 5/4 lens element dilemma) more important was to make sure that general public was ready to accept whole idea of microphotography, back then it was a risky novelty, and depended heavily on quality of film and optimal development. I can’t imagine that whole enterprise dangled on short ends donated or bought for a song. If you were to introduce revolutionary idea you had to base it on best possible stock, with reliable, repeatable effects, small grain film with adequate speed, (DIN didn’t consider classifying film speeds until 1934, so it was probably Scheier scale or some other long forgotten exotic one) fliegerfilm name ticked  alll the boxes, it made promise of being something ultra modern, advanced and reliable. Something that Leica desperately needed - a fast stock with small grain that would allow to make pictures in totally new way, with small pocket camera, without tripod with imposing number of pictures per load. Enlargers were the other important support for this revolution.
 

The price of ”arms length” of film giving you 30/40 pictures probably was much cheaper per picture than any single plate cameras could offer.  Motion picture material since bought in bulk and not needing individual package had best price per meter ratio,  economically  you couldn’t make better decision.  Just repack big rolls into smaller cartridges et voilà. 

Couldn’t find much information on toxo or Agfa flieger film, I suspect that majority of aerial reconnaissance was rather made with bigger formats, and whole fliegerfilm thing could be a just a short lived  army experiment or even marketing stunt. On the other hand If one looks at French army project to use flocks of pigeons equipped with cameras for aerial reconnaissance I can believe anything. 
 

 

[willeica]

10 hours ago, Roland Zwiers said:

William,

Thank you so much!

Can you bring me in contact with these new professionals at the Leitz Archive? I have been doing this research on early colour photography for some eight years now, especially focusing on early literature from the 1890s to the 1920s. I am sure that I can bring in relevant expertise.

Roland 

 

Thanks, Roland. I have to develop things a bit, but I will be in touch. The people in the archive are not just sitting there not replying to our requests. They are all very busy people. 

8 hours ago, Carlos cruz said:

Don’t know enough about history of Leica but I vaguely remember that film cartridge as we know today (ixmoo etc) wasn’t there at the beginning, it probably started with simple spools, something similar to so called day load spools used in motion pictures. Reading through this thread it occurred to me that actually film cartridges were very important discovery that facilitated advent of 35mm photography. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the notes concerning negatives didn’t concern camera/lens but rather observations on film types and developing techniques. Once you had a lightproof box that could transport film by repeating increments and expose it through timed slit  to light coming from the best lens you could afford to make (whole 5/4 lens element dilemma) more important was to make sure that general public was ready to accept whole idea of microphotography, back then it was a risky novelty, and depended heavily on quality of film and optimal development. I can’t imagine that whole enterprise dangled on short ends donated or bought for a song. If you were to introduce revolutionary idea you had to base it on best possible stock, with reliable, repeatable effects, small grain film with adequate speed, (DIN didn’t consider classifying film speeds until 1934, so it was probably Scheier scale or some other long forgotten exotic one) fliegerfilm name ticked  alll the boxes, it made promise of being something ultra modern, advanced and reliable. Something that Leica desperately needed - a fast stock with small grain that would allow to make pictures in totally new way, with small pocket camera, without tripod with imposing number of pictures per load. Enlargers were the other important support for this revolution.
 

The price of ”arms length” of film giving you 30/40 pictures probably was much cheaper per picture than any single plate cameras could offer.  Motion picture material since bought in bulk and not needing individual package had best price per meter ratio,  economically  you couldn’t make better decision.  Just repack big rolls into smaller cartridges et voilà. 

 

 

The story about the development of the Leica film cassettes has never been fully told. There is a huge thread somewhere (the search function here which used to work quite well is now awful) on this forum which is titled something like FILCA A, B and C, where is D? I started this some years ago, but we never got definitive answers. Also a few years ago I found notes about FILCAs on the inside cover of the camera register book for 1931. This showed rapid changes in FILCA design over a a few months in 1931 and this could have been the move to the C design which was abandoned after a very short period with a reversion to the B design which remained the standard one for many years. I think we concluded before that the D design was actually the Agfa -Leitz cassette. Last Friday, we were shown some parts in the archive which had recently turned up and which included some film cassette designs and parts which I had not seen before.

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As I indicated earlier, we did not have enough time to examine the many items we saw which included some that never saw production such as a prototype Leitz turret finder like the well known Zeiss designs. These have now gone on my list of material in the archive that needs further examination.. Some of the boxes we saw had numbers which indicated that they had been kept at one time in a 'museum environment'. 

As regards DIN etc, even by 1952, film speeds were far from standardised as this table shows, eg American and European Scheiner.

Leitz seems to have had involvement in developing films such as the AGFA-Leitz 'colour stock' which relied on filters for both taking and projection which was a technique which had been around since the late 19th Century. The real lift off occurred when Kodak developed the 35mm Retina and needed film stock to suit the new model and its customer base. Also for Kodachrome, which was introduced in the late 1930s, they need a container that could be sent to a Kodak development facility. All of these were milestones in the development of film and film storage.

William 

 

[thrid]

This is a fascinating thread...

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[LocalHero1953]

25 minutes ago, thrid said:

This is a fascinating thread...

One of the most interesting in the forum!@Roland Zwiers’s academic rigour in considering the broader history and business economy of the time is rare and his conclusions are thought provoking. I’m grateful he’s sharing it here. 

Edited June 29 by LocalHero1953

[sandro]

2 hours ago, willeica said:

The story about the development of the Leica film cassettes has never been fully told. There is a huge thread somewhere (the search function here which used to work quite well is now awful) on this forum which is titled something like FILCA A, B and C, where is D? I started this some years ago, but we never got definitive answers. 

That thread is still there, William: 

Lex