To the moon and back

Not only dyes, chemicals and medicines were produced in Klybeck. Patents, semi-finished projects or prototypes were also acquired, developed and, where applicable, put into production in Klybeck or at other company sites.

Many of these products not only went around the world, but as far as the moon and back. One product that made a splash, for example, helped NASA’s Houston control center keep track of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission:

“We’re in the middle of – well either … salmon salad, or something like that. That’s probably why we’re not answering you right away.”

“Okay. Well, we don’t want … ”

“My compliments to the chef, this salad is outstanding.”

“Roger. Understand, that’s the salmon salad. Over.”

“Something like that, salmon salad.”

“There we go, the salmon salad, very good.”

Buzz Aldrin’s compliments to the chef came from the Apollo 11 capsule, which  had been on its way to the moon for nearly 29 hours that July 21, 1969. The mission was broadcast on more than 20 large screens at the control center in Houston.

The technology for this was supplied by Ciba in the form of the then unique Eidophor large-screen projectors.

The Eidophor system, which made it possible to transmit a television signal via a projector onto a screen – a predecessor of today’s beamers – was invented by ETH researchers Fritz Fischer and Edgar Gretener in the late 1930s and was ready for demonstration by the end of the 1950s.

On April 23, 1958, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote in its technology supplement about the first public presentation of the device: “On April 11, the latest model of the Eidophor projector of Edgar Gretener AG, Zurich, was demonstrated with great success to a large circle of invited guests in the Rex cinema in Zurich. The program was recorded in the Bellerive studio and transmitted via the Uetliberg TV tower to the large screen of the Rex cinema by means of a return link. The picture quality met expectations in all respects.”

Ciba closely followed the development of the device from the beginning and took over the company after the death of the owner in late 1958.

The Eidophor system was first presented to a broad television audience on December 30, 1963. The television program Antenne reported on the use of the Eidophor at an auction held by the Basel radio station for the benefit of Pro Infirmis, a well-known Swiss foundation.

The auction took place in the courtyard of the Basel City Hall and was recorded with two cameras whose images were projected via the Eidophor system onto a 40-square-meter screen above the auctioneer, thus making the small auction items such as stamps and coins visible to the audience.

Ciba itself used the Eidophor primarily for medical training and education. For example, it allowed surgeries to be transmitted from a clinic to a university lecture hall. But it also made popular applications possible, such as broadcasting the 1960 Olympics to cinemas. This served a huge need, since only a few households owned a TV at the time.

The system continued to evolve throughout the 1960s, culminating in the simulcast of a medical education congress on early cancer detection and space medicine from the United States in 1970. In the same year, the first Eidophor color system was presented. But technical progress caught up with the device, which soon went out of fashion as lighter and handier beamers took the market by storm.

Another product that came out of Klybeck proved more durable: the dual-component synthetic resin adhesive Araldite, which also made it into space.

The extremely heat-resistant adhesive was used both as protection and as an adhesive for the heat shield tiles of the Apollo capsule. On July 21, 1969, the television program Antenne reported on Swiss products involved in the Apollo 11 mission, including Araldite:

“The Ciba branch in Monthey is making an important contribution to the Apollo program: heat-resistant synthetic resin adhesive needed for the heat shield of the capsule returning to earth … Satellites and space capsules must be protected against any radiation. The adhesive developed in Switzerland makes a major contribution to achieving this goal and will then, above all, help protect the Apollo capsule from burning up when it reenters the atmosphere at a frictional heat of 2300 degrees Celsius.”

Araldite traces its origins to the invention at a dental laboratory that offered the patent to Ciba in 1943 because it had not found a suitable use for it. Under the leadership of Ciba, Araldite was launched on the Swiss market shortly after the war as a do-it-yourself adhesive. Industrial applications followed in quick succession, as the dual-component glue had almost unbeatable adhesive strength and was also extremely durable.

The application of Araldite in connection with the restoration of the Dead Sea Scrolls received great attention, especially the delicate treatment of a directory, which was recorded on copper scrolls by the administrators of the ancient library.

The copper scroll was almost 2000 years old and could not be rolled up by scientists without breaking it, so the scroll was carefully covered with a layer of araldite. This stabilized the brittle mass and transformed it into a tough structure that could be cut up without loss and thus deciphered.

Araldite was also used in the rescue of the gigantic statues of Ramses at Abu Simbel. The imposing temple complex had to be relocated because of the Aswan Dam. For this purpose, the statues were sawn up, stabilized with 33 tons of Araldite, numbered and reconstructed at a new location.

Photography

At the end of the 1960s, another innovation from Klybeck revolutionized photography: the CibaChrome print, a so-called positive-to-positive photographic process used to reproduce film slides on photographic paper.

In this process, 13 special image dyes were incorporated directly into the photographic paper and removed during the development process. This process was in complete contrast to the technique previously applied, which used color couplers to bring the dyes out of the colorless paper during the development process.

The CibaChrome process enabled a quantum leap in color brilliance and depth of field and led to completely new presentation possibilities, especially in the advertising and trade show industries. In 1969, for example, the new Ford Capri 3000 GT was presented to the Swiss public as part of a traveling exhibition. The cars were placed in front of large-format, inwardly curved CibaChrome prints, creating the illusion that the car was standing in the driveway of Chillon Castle or under the leafy canopy of an avenue. CibaChrome was the photoshop of the late 1960s, so to speak.

The prints looked so real that, in 1970, on the occasion of an exhibition of an original CibaChrome print of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, the leading Italian magazine Tempo captioned the print with the words Il cenacolo come nato ieri (The Last Supper as if it had been made yesterday), since the reproduction showed much more detail than the original mural.

It is therefore not surprising that Ciba-Chrome prints were also the preferred photographic paper for photo artists in the 1970s and 1980s. The prints defined the quality standard of the international photo art scene for many years. When, from the mid-1980s onwards, the advertising and trade fair industries began to rely increasingly on image projection, the importance of CibaChrome prints gradually declined, and Ciba-Geigy sold the unit in 1989.

Although many innovations from Klybeck are now obsolete and are only exhibited in museums, the products have lost none of their fascination. They express the inventive spirit that allowed Klybeck to become a laboratory of ideas that was able to radiate its power throughout the world – even as far as the moon.