Word: kodak
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DISCONTINUED After a 74-year run, Kodachrome, the world's first commercially successful color film, was pulled by the Eastman Kodak Co. because of declining demand...
...years, anyone wishing to develop Kodachrome film had to send it to a Kodak laboratory, which controlled all processing. In 1954, the Department of Justice declared Kodachrome-processing a monopoly, and the company agreed to allow other finishing plants to develop the film; the price of a roll of film - which previously had the processing cost added into it - fell roughly 43%. (Read about Kodak's antitrust case...
...film seemingly every wedding, beach holiday and backyard barbecue for the next decade. (Aficionados can check out the opening credits of the '80s coming-of-age drama The Wonder Years for a quick hit of nostalgia.) When Paul Simon sang, "Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away" in 1973, Kodak was still expanding its Kodachrome line, and it was hard to believe that it would ever disappear. But by the mid-1980s, video camcorders and more easily processed color film from companies like Fuji and Polaroid encroached on Kodachrome's market share, and the film fell into disfavor. Compared...
...Kodak quit the film-processing business in 1988 and slowly began to disengage from film-manufacturing. Super 8 went by the wayside in 2007. By 2008 Kodak was producing only one Kodachrome film run - a mile-long sheet cut into 20,000 rolls - a year, and the number of centers able to process it had declined precipitously. Today, Steinle's Kansas store processes all of Kodak's Kodachrome film - if you drop a roll off at your local Wal-Mart, it will be developed at Dwayne's Photo - and though it is the only center left in the world...
Kodachrome 64 slide film, discontinued on June 22, was the last type of true Kodachrome available - although the company expects existing stocks to last well into the fall. Kodak plans to donate the last remaining rolls of Kodachrome film to the George Eastman House's photography museum. One of them will be symbolically shot by McCurry - although the famed photographer gave up the format long ago. In fact, McCurry's photographic career perfectly traces the rise and fall of Kodak film. He shot his iconic Afghan-girl portrait on Kodachrome and returned 17 years later to photograph the same woman...