116 and 616 roll film

During the early days of photography negative size was much more important than now because of the grain size and thus enlargement limitations. Larger negatives meant sharper pictures plus the added benefit of contact printing with is printing photos without having to enlarge it.

In 1932 Kodak introduced two new negative format, 620 and 616, the latter being 70 mm wide. The 616 format was the same as the existing 116 film format but the negative stock was wound on smaller spools in order to fit smaller cameras, that was, at least officially, the reason for introducing yet another format. The real reason might have been that Kodak owed the patent for this roll size and thus was the only one selling film for this format and when you already own the camera, you need fitting (Kodak) film too, right?