Ansco

Ansco was the brand name of a photographic company based in Binghamton, New York, which produced photographic films, papers and cameras from the mid-1800s until the 1980s. In the Late 1880's ANSCOs predecessor, Anthony and Scovill, bought the Goodwin Camera & Film Company. Hannibal Goodwin invented "roll" film, which should have made Anthony Scovill the leader in the Amateur photography business. Unfortunately, Eastman Kodak copied their patented process and immediately set out to compete against Anthony Scovill. The draconian behavior of Kodak nearly drove the now named ANSCO out of business, but a settlement in the 1910s saved the company from bankruptcy. Kodak got away cheaply on this legal proceeding. In the early 1920s, AGFA, purchased ANSCO to allow it to compete in the worldwide photographic market like its competitors, Kodak and Zeiss. This joint company, added many AGFA cameras and accessories to its sales in the USA, as a result of this. In The months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, The US Government seized AGFA-ANSCO. This now government run business continued to survive as a hostile alien property (under government control into the 1960s). Under this period, the organization was renamed GAF (General Aniline & Film Corporation). Throughout the Post war period the concern sold rebadged versions of cameras made by other manufacturers, including Agfa and Chinon. A Minolta-built Ansco model was the first 35 mm camera in space and their film was used in space, too.

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 (Connecticut), founded by James Mitchell Lamson Scovill and William Henry Scovill. That year the company headquarters relocated to Binghamton New York. This was already a site of one of Ansco's photographic paper manufacturing facilities. Just after that, in 1905 it settled a landmark patent infringement case against Eastman Kodak, which had been violating the Goodwin roll film patent (Hannibal Goodwin of Newark, New Jersey) held by Ansco. The settlement received from Kodak was very small compared to the damage done to Ansco, which already had financial problems as a result of business lost to Eastman Kodak.

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