This week in 1937

Last month the national press was full of obituaries for much-loved camera company Kodak, with the announcement of its long-rumoured bankruptcy. Some of the more simplistic analyses talked of a failure to keep up with the modern digital revolution and to innovate in an everchanging marketplace — all while neglecting to mention Kodak’s role in pioneering the charge-coupled device (CCD) imaging sensor and resulting digital camera in the 1970s.

In fact, Kodak was heavily involved in the cutting edge of photometry and microscopy research for consumers and industry over a period of more than 60 years.

Indeed some of this took place at a state-of-the-art facility in Harrow, north London, as the 5 March 1937 edition of The Engineer reports.

‘The research laboratory has been erected and equipped for the purpose of pure research into the physical and chemical phenomena connected
with the photographic industry,’ the article reads.

“The laboratory has been erected for the purposes of pure research”