[pure-silver] Re: Kodachrome

Richard Knoppow wrote:

[... big snip ...]
Agfa had solved the problem of sequestering the dyes that plagued Kodak at about the same time as Kodak released Kodachrome. Agfa called its film Agfacolor and both negative and transparency films were made but not sold outside of Germany.
Just a minor point. I don't have anything but anecdotal evidence, but I used to know some amateur photographers in my native Norway who were active photographers before and during the German occupation of Norway (1940 to 1945). The availability of photographic materials for civilian use was obviously severely limited, whether colour or black-and-white.
I recall at least one of them telling me of using Agfacolor slide film before and even during the war. During the war, colour film processing was not available for Norwegian civilians, so he told us of how he had the film smuggled to Sweden (which was neutral during the war) for processing.
Smuggling was not particularly difficult if you had the right contacts. There was (and still is) a railway connection from my home town of Trondheim to Sweden, and the border station where train-crew and locomotives were changed over was Storlien, a few miles inside the Swedish border and thus outside the direct control of the German occupation forces.
The father of a friend of mine was a conductor serving on those trains, and he told me how the local railway works had fashioned a number of hiding places on the locomotives for small items of contraband, including a metal container located inside the firebox. As I recall he said that location was mainly used for illegal underground newspapers printed in Sweden for distribution in occupied Norway. It obviously would not be suitable for firearms or explosives (!).
These hiding places were of course mainly used for information and materials to or from the resistance movement, but on at least one occasion it appears to have been used for sending slide film for processing (my acquaintance never told me whether the photographs were for resistance purposes or not).
Sorry for the lengthy digression, but it appears that Agfacolor films were sold in at least some markets outside Germany before the war. By the way, Agfacolor was the trademark used for both slide and negative films made by Agfa until (at least) the 70's. The first slide film I ever used was Agfacolor CT18 (which I believe was sold as Agfachrome CT18 in the US). 

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