Background
Karl Schinzel was born on December 20, 1886, in Austria.
Karl Schinzel was born on December 20, 1886, in Austria.
His father started him in a business career at age sixteen, but Karl Schinzel managed to complete his secondary education through evening studies. Later he attended Vienna Technical University (now TU Wien) (1907-1912), from which he graduated.
During World War I Karl Schinzel worked as a chemist, and after the war joined J. M. Eder's staff at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna. From 1922 to 1936 he worked in his own small research laboratory in Troppau, Bohemia (now Opava, Moravskoslezsky kraj, Czech Republic), and was invited to the Eastman Kodak laboratories in Rochester in 1936 and 1937-1938.
Returning to Austria, Karl Schinzel built a scientific laboratory in Baden, near Vienna, and worked there until 1942, when he joined the Zeiss-Ikon laboratory at Berlin-Zehlendorf. His research collection and apparatus were destroyed during World War II, so he moved to Vienna to continue his work.
Having become interested in color photography during his secondary studies, Karl Schinzel developed the Katachromie color process in 1905, which included the first multilayer color film and the first proposal for making color prints based on the catalytic destruction of dyes through oxygen released from peroxide in contact with a silver image. It was the forerunner of modern color films. In his Troppau laboratory, Karl Schinzel made advances in the subtractive color process with multilayer films, and while at Eastman Kodak he made improvements in the production of Kodachrome. At the time of his death, Karl Schinzel was working on a comprehensive book on color photography.