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Below is a table containing pictures of the covers of a series of booklets produced by Paterson, when they were Paterson Products Ltd in the late 1960s through to the mid-1980s, perhaps 20 years in all. R.F.Hunter Ltd were long time distributors of Paterson Products but in 1967 Johnsons of Hendon became Paterson's distributors. The reason for this is probably explained by an entry in 'News of the Week' in Amateur Photography magazine for 4th January 1967.

"Arthur Blackburn has retired from the chairmanship of R.F.Hunter Ltd after 52 years in the photographic trade. Blackie, as he is known to so many, joined Hunters, now a subsidiary of Johnsons of Hendon, in 1924, four years after the firm's inception. Perhaps his most significant contribution to its prosperity was the signing of an agreement in 1929 with Paul Franke of Franke & Heidecke whereby Hunter became agents for the Rollei (a new agreement was signed in July 1966)."

When Johnsons was acquired by the Hestair Company and underwent major restructuring and abandoned chemical production in 1974, it seems Paterson took over production of booklets similar to the Johnsons of Hendon ~ 'Home Photography' series. Similarities with the Johnsons 'Home Photography' series include the Paterson 'Book of Photography' also being edited by Kevin MacDonnell, the printers also being Sawtells of Sherborne, Dorset, and number of pages also being 104.

This speculation was confirmed to me by Alan Meek in an e-mail he sent in September 2005. Alan said:

"I started working for Paterson in 1968 and became Technical Manager of the company until I left in 1981. I was responsible for the production of the majority of the (Paterson) publications you illustrate. For many years before 1975 Johnsons of Hendon published successive copies of the Book of Photography (Alan means the 'Home Photography' series) which was written by Kevin MacDonnell (and 'Pip' Pippard). When Johnsons decided to cease publication Kevin came to Paterson with an updated (and Paterson orientated) version so we added to it and published our version. Over the years we updated it and eventually took over the writing ourselves.

Much of the writing was done by our General Manager George Ashton, who had joined us from Ilford Ltd. I too wrote many of the chapters. You mention Richard Bradford and David Morris, who were both photographers at Paterson. Some time after I left, Paterson approached me to write the new chapters for the 1987 revision so that it covered the latest chemicals and the enlarger/timer/analyser items for which Paterson had just purchased the manufacturing rights from Philips". Practical Photography in their April and May 1980 issues refer to George Ashton as "one time editor of Popular Photography (a US magazine that led to production of the UK magazine Practical Photography in 1959) and now Technical Director of Paterson products Ltd, with Mr.P.W.Deer being the Managing Director."

The following table begins by illustrating the booklets produced by Paterson after the demise of Johnsons of Hendon and their 'Home Photography' series (see paragraphs above). Then, at the end of the table are pamplets and magazine pages advertising Paterson Products from 1973 to 1998. In these, I have tried to trace some of the chronology of Paterson's move into complete home darkroom outfits (their successful 'darkroom in a box' idea) for black & white and for colour printing. Also their colour chemistry (initially Acucolor 2 for C41 colour negative film and Acucolor 3 for EP-2 colour paper, eventually becoming dual chemistry Acuclor Universal and finally 2NA) and their E6 colour transparency processing chemistry, Acuchrome 6.