Cost of a Darkroom Setup - 1940

<p>I'm an archaeologist, and we just can't help looking at things in terms of the past. We even have a naive justification that we learn from the past, a conviction not strongly supported by our objective evidence.</p>

<p>Anyhow, I just got a 'new' copy of the <em>Popular Photography</em> issue of October, 1940. I thought it might be interesting for other historically-inclined people to see where we were and what it was like back then. The issue was "Special Darkroom Issue" and the article was called "Budget Darkrooms from $10.00 to $1,000.00".</p>

<p>For some kind of context on the prices, according to (<a href="http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/decade40.html">link</a>), in 1940, the <em>average</em> salary was $1,299, the minimum wage was $0.40 an hour, and 8 million people out of a total of 132 million in the USA were out of work.<br /><br />Here are the darkrooms and their equipment and cost.</p>

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<p>I love this. Thanks</p>

<p>I like it too. Pretty interesting to compare what I have paid for my darkroom equipment over the last 10 years, it's basically the $1000 set up for the $200 price tag, in today's dollars. Pennies on the dollar...I love it.</p>

<p>that's actually very expensive if you consider inflation. Today with careful shopping you could get a deluxe darkroom set for the $1000. The equipment is likely to be better than those listed in your ads.</p>

<p>Indeed, that $1000 darkroom was nearly a year's earnings for the average person.</p>

<p>I wonder what type of enlarger you could buy with just $10 came with a lens too ? Just goes to show you how prices have gone up for the modern-day equivalents... </p>

<p>Maybe not too bad. A contact printer box kit (same issue of <em>Popular Photography</em>) was $3.50 and new prices for enlargers in the ads in that issue were from around $12 and up. There was a substantial market then in used equipment, and I would guess that some of the cheaper ones could have been picked up used for around $10.</p>

<p>Here are a couple of ads - the first one has an Argus (used?) enlarger at $12.50. </p><div></div>

<p>Here is the range of prices of Eastman (Kodak) enlargers, new.</p><div></div>

<p>I am so stealing these Jim... :-) Thanks for the flash back.. Tomorrow I get my old books back from the ex I will dig in for us......<br>

<br />I hope he kept his tie out of the chemicals.</p>

<p>Using the OP's privilege of going off topic......<br>

In the pictures above, the guys are wearing a tie in the darkroom. On Saturday, watching the live audience on "Live at the Met Hi Definition" in my local theater, maybe no more than half the men had ties and a jacket on even. Times they is a changing!</p>

<p>I have a photograph of a young woman who was a photographer for a major Los Angeles, CA newspaper. It shows her, around 1960 in the darkroom wearing a photographer's apron, high heels and pearls.</p>

I had the enlarger "A" in the Kodak ad when I was in high school for 620 film in several folderrs. Used it with the kit lens for several years and then upgraded several times. After I moved away from home to a place with no space for a darkroom I bought a Retina Ia and switched to Kodachrome.

In an old mechanic's handbook I once had circa 1930s, machinists were advised to tuck their neckties into their shirts so they wouldn't get caught in the lathe or drill press. Sports photographers up to the 1960s wore suits and ties.

<p>From the US Department of Labor - Bureau of Labor Statistics web site, $1.00 in 1940 is equivalent to $16.40 in 2012 dollars. So the range of darkrooms would be from $164.00 to $16,400.00!</p>

<p>And now Darkroom equipment is pennies on the Dollar... Good for me, bad for most others like those who make the equipment.</p>