Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/12/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Christoph, The infamous Andree expidition took place 1899, it was an attempt to reach the North Pole by some "early" explorers. The ballon landed on Bear Island and the members of the expidition died ( most likely from vitamin B overdoses, eating polar bear livers). In 1931 the camp was discovered and the films recovered. These were not glassplates, Kodak had made a flexible filmbase roll, 4,5" wide and the cameras were early focalplane shutter cameras. When found the rolls had been stored in metal containers, tightly rolled. It took years to unspool and develop these haunting images and last I heard (1989) there are still one or two rolls left to do. Kodak did "clip- testing" for the film and made up special developers for the job. If you have a chance of going to Sweden, there is a small, rather cute town called Granna, about midway between Stockholm and Malmo, that has a museum dedicated to this expedition. They have the cameras and the negatives, as well as the prints made. There is also a book published ( in swedish) about the ill fated trip and some years ago there was a movie made. The ballon was named " The Eagle", preceeding that other statement " The Eagle has landed" by at least 70 years. There is some controversy going on why the expedition failed, there certainly was inexperience among the crew, national pride was pushing the project faster than it should have been done and the fact that the high Actic and the North Pole are still places that will excert a price on anyone going there. I have seen some of the negs from this expedition, I am happy i dont have to print them!! They were also on nitrate base and needed to be handled carefully. Is there anyone from Kodak on the LUG that could shed some more light on this subject or could one of our Swedish LUGgers find out more? I am 6-7000 miles away from the source of this information. I think that the movie is available on video although I dont know the title in english. The town of Granna was the home to "Ingenjor Andree" ( these were the days when you were know by your title and Andree was an engineer), the other claim to fame the town has is that it is home to the " mother of all candy canes". These are 1' thick6-8" long peppermint candycanes. They have probably made more dentists rich in Sweden than any other sugarproducts. These candy canes are known as "Polkagrisar", roughly translated " Polkapigs" Ain't trivia wonderful! Tom A