Former photo company engineer recalls his many KODAK moments

Ukiah resident Marty Husmann will tell you that he really "was never much into photography." That doesn't explain the 6,000 slides he took on weekends between 1942 and 1983. Or how he has spent many recent months digitizing 2,000 of those slides with a homemade slide copying device.

The 83-year-old physicist /engineer and Eastman Kodak Company retiree has had more influence over camera design, film processing, and even spy satellite photos of Russia than he's willing to admit or take credit for. If you listen to his stories about career advancement and his fast forward military experience you believe him when he says, " The truth is, as far as events go, it's been miracles and humor since the time I got of of high school."

Martin Husmann was born in Brazil, Indiana in 1924. At age 17, he met a classmate whose dad was a Major at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. With a shortage of engineering minds, the government paid him to go to Purdue University for six months to earn his engineering degree.
He was put on assignment to develop anti-radar programming. His job was to develop a program that would show a picture of enemy radar pulses. Another engineer then built a device to send back radar pulses that would throw off the enemy. "I loved designing electronic circuits," Husman remembered.

When the project ended after three months, Husmann turned 18 and had earned an engineering rating comparable to a four year degree. "I went home to tell my parents and they listened in silence," says Husmann. When he was done informing them, they handed him a government letter notifiying him of the draft. "I was marched right to Columbus for the induction process," Husmann added.

Husmann says he would have been at the Battle of the Bulge and was headed to an Army Camp in Georgia when when the train he and his fellow soldiers were on stopped mysteriously in the middle of the night. "A sergeant came through the train and said, 'Get your stuff together, you're getting off the train.'

"He handed me an envelope and I got off and stood next to the tracks and realized I was back at Wright Patterson. The next morning they hauled me to Wright Patterson Field and gave me the same job as a Private." According to Husmann, his orders had been intercepted and some strings had been pulled to get back to the same position with only one week of military training. In six months he earned Sergeant rank and within a year he was at Staff Sergeant.

When the war was over, Husmann was assigned to a packing and crating team. He and his unit were trained to pack airplanes, parts, cameras, binoculars, etc. He got his orders to go to Calcutta. He was the youngest of the 30 soldiers but had the highest ranking so he found himself in charge. Upon takeoff to Calcutta, the Air Force command plane had to turn around for a technical problem and upon landing, Husmann says his unit accidentally received a hero's welcome at the airport in New York by a crowd who mistook them as returning soldiers.
After nine months in Calcutta, the troops were sent home. "Three thousand soldiers were sent back to Seattle," Husmann recalled. "It took 31 days and we saw the Southern Cross and flying fish."

In 1946, Husmann took a 30 day leave to visit family. He was contacted by a civilian head and offered a job running the physicts research department at the University of Illinois. After four years, he graduated, had gotten married to his wife Betty and had a baby on the way.

Just by chance he had cut through the electrical engineering building and came across recruiters working for Eastman Kodak. He was intervied as an engineering graduate student and hired on the spot. Off he went to Rochester, N.Y. to the electronics development lab where he worked for five years. He had a project to design a large contact screen for enlargements. It required a 1000 watt mercury lamp source to expose negatives. The project lasted 2 years and when it was over, Husmann said the lab through a celebration party. " Someone rigged up a hose and blew smoke into the hose while he was showing it off," Husmann chuckled. Apparently, engineers were known for their practical jokes.

After miserable winters in New York, Husmann asked for a transfer and joined a start up team for a film processing plant in Palo Alto until where he stayed until 1956. He helped set up the new facilty which was set to become one of many on the West Coast.

Husmann was suppose to go back to Rochester but decided the weather was too rough. He was set to leave Kodak but the company offered to find him a position on the West Coast that would keep him happy. Husmann found himself involved in contracts with Kodak and Lockheed Air Force Base. He was named a technical liasion between Rochester Engineers and Lockheed Engineers. He and his family moved to L.A. to accommodate the new job.

Husmann can't say much about the gig accept that "It was beyond classified and top secret. You never knew what was really going on because it was such a need to know set up," he said. "I knew more than most people. I knew they were building a camera for a satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc."

According to Husmann, who was one of a handful of people to actually see the first images captured by satellite cameras, the satellite would takes pictures, then land by parachute and be caught in mid air, then be snagged and brought back to the lab for development.
"Everybody that looked at it was shocked by what they saw the Russians were building during the Arms Race," said Husmann.

Husmann recalls looking at prints only once. Then classified, top secret status took over. During this time, Husmann contributed as a facilitator between the two engineering crews, sometimes handling paperwork and going over contracts and legalities. His next move was to Sunnyvale, then after a four-year project, took an opening at the Palo Alto Kodak processing lab.
Husmann said it crossed his mind many times that he should probably build a bomb shelter for his family at his new home. "Those images really did scare me," he said.

Husmann was named plant engineer in charge of maintenance and everything involved in the film processing. "I'm proud that during that time I took relatively inexperienced employees, sent them to school and by the time I left, I had trained myself out of a job.

It was during the his time at the processing plant that Husmann took home rolls of ektacolor or kodachrome slide film so the plant could use them to test the equipment each week. Kodak had intentions of building more process plants until the government issued a consent decree stating that Kodak had to separate the price of film cost from processing. Forcing consumers to process their film at Kodak created a monopoly situation.

Husmann eventually retired from Kodak in 1983 after 33 years and moved his family to Ukiah in 1995. Marty and his wife Betty celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last weekend surrounded by their six children, who all went to college and beyond with careers in teaching, nursing, physical therapy, NASA engineering and a professor of environmental geography.

Husmann anticipated that many photographs would be taken at his family get together as all of his kids and their kids have cameras of their own and know just how to use them.

Suzette Cook-Mankins is a 20 year veteran of photojournalism and ROP Photo Teacher. Send comments, questions, requests to suzettecook@onebox.com