That is what I would expect. I don't think any sort of anti-fog will
work and wouldn't even if the box had been well sealed. The chemical
process for making emulsion continues after the emulsion is coated.
Modern emulsion technology has devised additives to extend the shelf
life of emulsion but none of it has a very long life.
If the box is trade marked Ansco it was made no later than 1926
unless it was made after 1944. AGFA bought Ansco in 1926 and began
using the AGFA trade mark in the U.S. I am not sure if Ansco had use of
AGFA formulas before that, I think they might have for a while. AGFA was
a German owned company, associated with I.G.Farben. It was seized by the
U.S. Government on our entry into WW-2. It continued to use the AGFA
trade name until about 1944 when it was dropped and Ansco resumed. Ansco
was eventually returned to private ownership and promptly mis-managed to
death. AGFA resumed marketing (badly) to the U.S. sometime around the
1960s but I am not at all sure of the date. Ansco had used AGFA
formulas for emulsion making. When I began doing photography after a
many year lapse I found AGFA papers smelled exactly like the
Ansco paper I used as a kid. I always like AGFA and Ansco papers for
their looks but the surfaces never had the kind of uniformity Kodak had.
Ansco and AGFA papers always had problems with edge frilling and
sometimes uneven spots. They made some strange surfaces, some almost
like enamel. Not good for detail but the old highly textured surfaces
were mostly intended to cover over detail in portraiture to save on
retouching.
On 8/29/2016 4:30 PM, Martin magid wrote:
The box was not sealed. In the darkroom with the safelight on I took out a sheet, and covered one half of the emulsion side with the closed box, and then turned on the fluorescent lights for about 10 minutes while I prepared and poured Dektol 1:2, stop bath and Kodak Professional fixer.
Then I turned the lights out and developed the sheet for 2 min., and stopped & fixed. Both the exposed part of the sheet and the covered part developed to solid black. So it can't be used as-is.
I then took another sheet out under safelight, and put it directly into the fix for 3 min. It stayed cream-colored, the color of the postal card, which was pre-printed on the back side. This is single-weight fibre paper. Both sheets are drying now.
What I'm thinking of doing is fixing a number of blank sheets, to make post cards, and put Liquid Light or AG-1 on them, and then either make contact prints or in-camera negatives.
I may also develop a number of sheets to black, and fix and wash them, and put Rockland Colloid tintype emulsion on them to make cardboard tintypes. I could do that in my Gordon Street Camera which used cardboard tintype material to produce direct positives.
Inside the box was a two-sided sheet of instructions for developing and toning the Cyko paper, with formulas. It is dated Feb. 1, 1913. If anyone is interested, I can scan both sides and email them to you. I still don't know how to make a tiny url. If someone could take my scans and post a tinyurl that would be even better.
The instruction sheet also has a price list. The original price for the half-gross of these postal card papers was $1.50.
Marty
