Obscure non-silver b/w slide, movie print process??

There was a time, about 30 years ago when one home-movie vendor was offering positive 8mm, Super

-8 prints of their catalog in a positive process that used heat (I think) to make the release prints.

Positive prints from negatives. It was of course highly promoted at the time. I wish I had more info,

but I don't. Does anyone remember anything about this?

I can't remember anything about a heat process, but the way that the guys I knew made Super-8 prints was to blow-down a 16 mm release print to Double-Super-8 interneg (I vaguely recall seeing Quadruple Super-8 as well) then to make the Super-8 release prints using DS8 print film.

Beseler "Slide-o-Film" was the product I remember but it was for 35mm film. You sandwiched a negative and piece of film together and exposed it to bright light (think slide projector), then popped the film into boiling water. The emulsion turned white (instead of black in silver based films). When you projected the new "slide", the white blocked light transmission (just like black does), and you had a positive slide.

Back in the late 1970s, I worked for Kalvar Corporation, a developer of vesicular (heat-developed) material primarily used for high-speed microfilm duplication. By that time, the company had already prototyped (and abandoned) a product for use with the CBS EVR system. Here, color movies were to have been written onto vesicular stock using electron-beam recording. The EVR system, as I recall, used monochrome Super-8mm sized film to permit playback of pre-recorded video in full color; take a peek at http://www.cedmagic.com/history/cbs-evr.html and http://www.terramedia.co.uk/video/evr.htm for more information.

 

Although I was never involved with the EVR project, I do have two EVR players (a Motorola and an Hitachi). And somewhere in my vast collection of clutter, I have a demo Kalvar reel of an excerpt from Hawaii Five-O.

 

As for vesicular film, I believe that Anacomp still manufactures both the film and duplicators.

Back in the late '70s or early 80's Polaroid made a product called "Polavision" which developed home super 8 movies in color. It needed no wet chemicals, but that's all I know about it. It never caught on as video was right around the corner.