
Kodak Reference Handbook (1945) - brudgers
https://archive.org/details/KodakReferenceHandbook
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rightbyte
With todays standards that documentation seems alien. It is insanely well
worked through.

A glimpse at those docs makes me wonder how much knowledge is just lost due to
the plug-n-play 3 page manual era where every project seems like a kinda
reboot of the knowledge when the prior engineers left.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
To me, it looks like a basic overview-level book on photography, with a focus
on Kodak. Aside from the recipes and datasheets, the general information is
nowadays available in Wikipedia with a bit less structure but way more detail
(e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_aberration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_aberration)).

I'd consider it an introductory textbook on photography, not documentation.

More importantly, this seems to be an external, public book, not internal
documentation for engineers documenting the in-depth stuff that wasn't public.
_That_ would be interesting to see!

~~~
Finnucane
Yes, this was for photographers and lab techs who were buying and using Kodak
gear and supplies. Every darkroom had one of these, or one very much like it.
Nowadays you have to look online and download pdf’s for this sort of thing.

I have an Ektar 203mm lens in Kodak Supermatic shutter, the upgraded version
of the anastigmat listed here. The Ektars were Kodak’s top-of-the-line lenses
and it still works pretty well on my field camera.

