I didn’t determine it to be anything. What I actually said was (emphasis in bold added): “
I don’t think there’s much prospect of identifying the object from a single photograph, except to say that it shows something entering the atmosphere on an unknown date. So, likely meteoritic/cometary in origin.” I later added: “
Both meteoroid and cometary debris could create what is seen in the photograph, but there's very little else that can be said from what is seen.”
No, I don’t have inside contacts in space agencies or in the Mauna Kea observatory.
I was waiting for you to raise a “UFO” argument with conspiratorial “
not allowed to disclose it” theories, and you didn’t disappoint.
Let’s approach this from a different angle.
When Kodachrome slide film was first launched in 1936, the price included mandatory processing and mounting by a Kodak laboratory. Only Kodak’s own labs were licensed to use the unique proprietary development process and they did not use Craftsmens Guild EasyMount holders. They used their own branded cardboard mounts known as ‘Kodak Ready-Mounts’, like this (the exact wording changed over the years, but they were unmistakably Kodachrome branded):
View attachment 2255243
That situation persisted until 1954 when the Department of Justice ruled that Kodachrome-processing was a monopoly, and the company was forced to allow independent third-party labs to process the film. They sourced their own slide mounts, such as Craftsmens Guild EasyMount among others.
Your slide (pictured below) carries patent numbers 2014743 and 2127940, issued in 1935 and 1938 respectively. Both were Utility Patents with a 17-year expiry. Patent holders or licencees generally didn’t quote expired patent numbers on their items because they no longer had any validity for protection purposes. That’s how I concluded the slide mount dates no later than 1952, because the 1935 patent had then expired.
View attachment 2255244
That doesn’t sit well with the 1954 date for Kodak being forced to allow third-party processing, even allowing for old stock of third-party slide mounts produced in 1952 being used up in the following year or so. However, I checked further, and that 1935 patent was actually
filed on 20th October 1933. US patent rules allowed for a protection of 17 years from the date of issue,
or 20 years from the earliest filing date, whichever was longer. That means the patent was still valid in October 1953, which sits more comfortably with the film having been third-party processed in 1954 or a little later.
View attachment 2255245
Although interchangeable long lenses for 35mm cameras first became available to the general public in 1935 (such as the Leica 135mm telephoto), they were expensive… the equivalent of several thousand dollars today. The early Leica lenses were for rangefinder cameras, not SLRs, with consequent difficulty in focussing and suitable only for professionals. That situation changed after WWII with the advent of SLR cameras such as the Zeiss Contax S in 1949 and interchangeable telephoto lenses available up to 1000mm focal length. Still expensive of course, but progressively becoming more affordable in the 1950s.
If your slide is from around 1954/1955, as I believe it might be, that potentially puts a different perspective on things.
