Kinemacolor and Kodak: The Enterprise of Colour

This chapter considers two distinctive elements within colour film history: the additive colour system known as Kinemacolor, and the development of subtractive colour film processes by Kodak. By understanding these two film enterprises in terms of their shared vision – to bring colour to the motion picture screen – and their very different approaches to the technical solution and its business development, it establishes the nature of these respective histories and their interrelationship. Kinemacolor, with its concentration on the optical and the mechanical, relied on George Albert Smith’s ingenuity as a lay scientist working with mechanical engineers. Dr Kenneth Mees of Eastman Kodak was the polar opposite, as his colour work represented the professional, scientific approach funded and supported by a global corporation.