| ADOX,
one of the world´s oldest brands for photochemical
products Founded as the worlds first photochemical factory in 1860 ADOX Dr.C. Schleussner GmbH soon became one of the leading producers in Europe. Legendary films such as the KB 14 and KB 17 beeing the world´s first thin layer films made ADOX famous inside and outside of Germany. In the USA KB 14 and KB 17 were called "the German wonderfilm".  |
 ADOX Fotowerke Dr. C. Schleussner GmbH.   |
 Small coating machine ADOX Fotowerke Dr. C. Schleussner GmbH.   |
 Goebel Super 1400 Filmslitter ADOX Fotowerke Dr. C. Schleussner GmbH (This machine is still in the posession of ADOX Fotowerke GmbH and runs up to today) |
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  KB 14 and KB 17 exist up to today. Their current names are ADOX CHS 25 and ADOX CHS 50. They are beeing made in 35mm, 120 and sheets. |
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1956 ADOX brought to the market their first
colour negative film. Two years later came the
reversal film C 15. C 18 was the latest colour
reversal film introduced by ADOX. It had 7 layers,
3 of which beeing colour layers. The spectral
response was very harmonic and well balanced (see
spectrogram below). The reversal processing was
done in ADOX´s own reversal lab called the "ADOX
Umkehranstalt". |
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 The colour negative film NC 17 could be home processed using the ADOX E-NC developing kit. |
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ADOX held many patents for colour photographic
technology. This made ADOX for years indepedant of
the competition. The ADOX colour coupling system
was based on the chromogenic development first
introduced by R. Fischer in 1911. The key problem
was to find colour dyes which did not mix during
processing. Thousands of tests needed to be made in
order to find the right dyes. (Image on the left:
ADOX colour lab).
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From the 20ies until the 60ies ADOX
manufactured cameras in Wiesbaden.
Prominent series were the ADOX Golf (medium format) and POLO (35mm). The lenses for the Golf came from Will Wetzlar and were called "ADOXAR". The POLO series contained the POLO 1, POLO 2, POLO 1S, POLOmat 1, POLOmat 1S and the POLOmatic 3S. POLOmat cameras had a coupled exposure meter and the POLOmatic even had a fully automated exposure system. Lenses were manufactured -with exeption of the POLO 1- by Schneider Kreuznach. |
A milestone in the hystory of camera manufacturing was the introduction of the world´s first camera with interchangeable film magazines by ADOX.
It was called the ADOX 300.
Today
The original ADOX Dr. Schleussner Fotowerke do not exist anymore.
ADOX Fotowerke GmbH Bad Saarow carries on the tradition of the ADOX brand.
We manufacture fibre base papers, 35mm films, rollfilms, sheetfilms, photochemistry and more.
Our goal is to keep a full range of photochemical products in a small scale manufacturing process allive.
In 2009 we opened up the "worlds smallest photochemical factory" in Bad Saarow.
ADOX Fotowerke GmbH is working under low automatisation with a large degreee of manual work.
This enables us to be very flexible and manufacture many different types of films and papers without much overhead and fixed costs.
Our workflow today is not far away form the original ADOX Dr. C. Schleussner Fotowerke which also used similar machines in their times, but we are now much smaller.
Even after the "digital revolution" ADOX still stands strong for a comprehensive range of classic photographic products.
ADOX Fotowerke Bad Saarow 2009
