Kodachrome II 8mm with 1957 manufacture code

[Allan Reizman]

I'm still deciphering old family 8mm movie films and I've encountered a mystery. I have a roll of UK manufactured Kodachrome that is marked triangle circle for a manufacture year of 1957. My family insists the film was exposed in London for an event held in 1959, so the manufacturing codes on the film are consistent with that.
The conflict is the film is marked Kodachrome II which according to my research, was not available until 1961. So was KII manufactured earlier and available in the UK as early as 1959 or is my family mistaken and this film is dated off the USA mfg. chart from 1966?

Thoughts?

[John Hermes]

Hello Allan. I have transferred films since the 1980s and have used the Kodak edgecode legend chart to date films. They supposedly have a unique chart for Regular 8 film manufacture for 1954-64. Your triangle circle date is indeed 1957 using that chart. However, I have found that this chart is not always correct. It seems some R8 film dating is more accurate using the non-Regular 8 chart. Triangle circle on the standard chart is 1966 which still doesn't jibe with your circa 1959 shoot. I doubt KII was available anywhere before 1961 (especially 1959!) so this remains a mystery. My guess is the film is from the 1966 era with cloudy memories over time causing the mistake.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

There are several different lists available besides Kodak’s official one, e.g.:
https://reto.ch/pub/Kodak_8_16_mm.pdf

Also according to Kodak, the „Kodachrome II“ was introduced in 1961: https://www.kodak.com/en/company/page/milestones/

Are you sure that it’s „Kodachrome II“? When using a magnifier, some of those letters sometimes result in a different character than with the naked eye.
E.g. your „II“ might as well be an „A“ (as Kodachrome Type A was marked as „KODACHROME A SAFETY FILM“). And it was available in Reg8 since 1936: https://www.mcnygenealogy.com/book/k...ak-v12-n05.pdf

[Joerg Polzfusz]

BTW: You might also want check the complete film. E.g. I failed to record a title on some of my films shot in 2014, but shot and added them in 2022. In other words: you might have an introduction sequence that got shot and added later.