Ansco
Encyclopedia
Binghamton, New York
Binghamton is a city in the Southern Tier of New York in the United States. It is near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers...
, which produced inexpensive camera
Camera
A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
s for most of the 20th century. It also sold rebadged versions of cameras made by other manufacturers, including Agfa and Chinon
Chinon Industries
was a Japanese camera manufacturer. Kodak took a majority stake in the company in 1997, and made it a fully owned subsidiary of Kodak Japan, , in 2004 . As a subsidiary, it continues to develop digital camera models....
. A Minolta
Minolta
Minolta Co., Ltd. was a Japanese worldwide manufacturer of cameras, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It is perhaps best known for making the first integrated autofocus 35mm SLR camera system...
-built Ansco model was the first 35 mm
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
camera in space.
History
The company was founded in 1842 (pre-dating Kodak in the photography business) as E. Anthony & Co. (later E. and H.T. Anthony & Company, when Edward Anthony's brother officially joined the business) and became the Anthony & Scovill Co. in 1901, after a merger with the Camera business of Scovill Manufacturing (CT). That year the company headquarters relocated to Binghamton New York. This was already a site of one of ANSCO's paper manufacturing facilities. Just after that, in 1905 it settled a landmark patent infringement case against Eastman Kodak, who had been violating the Goodwin roll film patent (Hannibal GoodwinHannibal Goodwin
Hannibal Goodwin , was an Episcopal priest at the House of Prayer in Newark, New Jersey, patented a method for making transparent, flexible roll film out of nitrocellulose film base, which was used in Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, an early machine for viewing animation.-Biography:He was born in...
of Newark NJ) held by ANSCO. The Settlement by Kodak was very small compared to the damage done to ANSCO, which already had financial issues as a result of lost business to Eastman Kodak. In 1928 Ansco merged with the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
photo company Agfa into a corporation named Agfa-Ansco. Later that year that firm and other German owned chemical firms were merged into a German-controlled (by IG Farben
IG Farben
I.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
) Swiss-based corporation named Inter-nationale Gesellschaft für Chemische Unternehmungen AG or IG Chemie, for short. In 1929 the parent corporation's name was changed to American IG Chemical Corporation
American IG
American IG is the name of a company, and it owes its genesis to a German business conglomerate, namely, Interessens-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG, or IG Farben for short...
or American IG, later renamed General Aniline & Film, which continued to produce cameras under the Agfa-Ansco name.
During the period before the U.S. entrance into World War II, the Agfa-Ansco business grew enormously, with added manufacturing capacity in paper, film and camera manufacturing. The Agfa-Ansco interests in the U.S. and Binghamton factory were taken over by the U.S. government in 1941 due to its ties with Germany. The company was the last business to be sold as enemy assets to American interests in the 1960s. At that time, a new headquarters was constructed in Vestal, New York
Vestal, New York
Vestal is a town within Broome County in the Southern Tier of New York, and lies between the Susquehanna River and the Pennsylvania border. As of the 2000 census, the population was 26,535, estimated to have grown to 27,369 in 2009....
, adjacent to the new college campus of Harpur College (now Binghamton University
Binghamton University
Binghamton University, also formally called State University of New York at Binghamton, , is a public research university in the State of New York. The University is one of the four university centers in the State University of New York system...
). This location is the only remaining evidence of ANSCO in the Binghamton area, and is currently occupied by the University. It continued to do business after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
as Ansco until 1967 when the company adopted the parent's name of General Aniline & Film (GAF), and a variety of cameras as well as films were sold under this name until the business was shut down in the early 1980s. The last Ansco cameras were produced in the early 1990s by a Hong Kong business that bought the rights to the name.