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Ask anyone of the hundreds of millions of families in the affluent industrial world what they have in common with their peers and after a moment of contemplation, they will come up with a list of worldly goods including a camera and albums or boxes of photos recording the life of their families. Behind that pastime of photography lies photo finishing, a fascinating industry.

In 1886 George Eastman coined the famous slogan "You press the button - we do the rest". The rest, that is the developing and printing of films, was the start of the photofinishing industry. An essential part of amateur photography, although not widely known, it was for many years a cottage industry carried out by hundreds of thousands of photo shops, but in the second half of the 20th century, it became a major industry worldwide.

For most people the interval between sending the film to be developed and receiving the prints is somewhat of a mystery. For many years, developing and printing was literally carried out in the dark, but that is no longer so. The growth of picture taking, accompanied by the rise and subsequent transformation of the photofinishing industry during the last 50 years is a fascinating story.

Until after the Second World War, the majority of pictures taken were black and white. From the fifties onwards there was a gradual shift towards colour; initially transparencies and later prints, so that by the Millennium the overwhelming majority of the output of the industry were colour prints.

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The size and growth of the industry was primarily governed by the sales of cameras and films and very little influenced by the marketing efforts of the photofinishers. For many years there was a rapid growth in photography, so that there was more than enough for anyone capable of offering the service. Like many other profitable industries, it has since become very competitive and everybody is fighting hard either to obtain or retain their share.

A good indication of the scale of the industry is that in the United States, the largest market, almost 1 billion films were sold in the year 2000. Add to that the fact that the cost of developing and printing is usually higher than the cost of the films and it is soon apparent why photofinishing has been the significant part of the photographic industry which has been eagerly fought over by the major players such as Kodak and Fuji.

In the last few years the industry has changed dramatically as picture taking has changed from film to digital cameras. Many well known names have come and gone and some new ones have taken their place. The era of having one's films "developed and printed" is coming to an end and it seems likely that, before the end of the first decade of this century, film may well be a rarity. There are now many options for dealing with one's pictorial memories and this account tells how these have evolved over the last 120 years.

OUT OF THE DARKroom
A short history of the Photofinishing Industry
By Peter L M Rockwell and Peter W Knaack.
Paperback 180 pages ISBN10  0-9554072-0-6 or ISBN13  97809554072-0-8
Published by 2P Press, London UK £12.99 US $23.99