A “silver curtain” of secrecy separated Eastman Kodak’s photographic emulsion researchers from their co-workers and professional colleagues in the Cold War United States. As the popularity of this metaphor among Kodak’s laboratory workers suggests, the firm’s concern about divulging insights into the chemistry of silver halide emulsions partly stemmed from its participation in military initiatives such as project Corona, the satellite reconnaissance program. However, Kodak’s extensive use of secrecy predated the start of the Cold War by more than half a century. As early as the 1890s, the firm had introduced policies of classification, compartmentalization, and fragmentation, while also restricting the mobility of its technically skilled personnel by means of employment contracts and non-compete agreements. While some of these measures were relaxed in the following decades, none was fully abandoned.
Drawing on the Kodak Historical Collection and other newly accessible archival sources, this paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relationships between industrial and state secrecy in twentieth-century research and development work. I first demonstrate that, during World War I, Kodak’s emulsion researchers were allowed to collaborate relatively freely with the Army and the Bureau of Standards on the development of aerial photography. Afterward, however, Kodak was no longer willing to support emulsion studies outside of its own closely controlled facilities. Similarly, despite the program’s highly classified nature, project Corona did not involve access or communication restrictions to which Kodak’s emulsion researchers had not previously been accustomed.
