I believe that the blind ladies, and the scuttlebutt was there were three of them, only did the final assembly of the the film packs. I just wrote the following for a friend that is interested:
"Now I imagine that Kodak et al cut the production rolls into strips, then loaded 12 strip rolls into a machine along with the backing paper, Then those machines fed a backing paper cut off 135mm of film, automatically ran a strip of glue on the sheet of film and feed it on to the backing paper 12 at a time, then piled one on top of the other. The blind ladies working in the dark put the safety paper into the box, then the pile of 12 glued paper and film strips into the box, laid the backing plate with spring on top of them, folded the paper over the backing plate assembly and closed the box. The metal box was then sealed into the light tight foil and the foil package put into the retail box."
As the story goes Kodak made the 523 (4x5) Film Packs until the aging ladies reached retirement age, then ceased production. 2-1/4x3-1/4 and 3-1/4x4-1/2 were dropped in 1976 (the other sizes except 4x5 were dropped in 1946) according to the film Wiki. The 4x5 about 10-12 years later. As far as I know Kodak was the only company still making Film Packs at that time.
Considering that Kodak probably had to sell 10,000 Film Packs a year to make a profit, it is a wonder that they continued making them that long. Remember that 4x5 went out as a news camera about 1955 or so. So likely the only ones buying many film packs after that was the military.
The question is can 500 to 1000 4x5 Film Packs a year be sold to us die hard film users? One of the problems is that there are enough people around that remember the super thin film that was used in the 16x packs (which came out about 1970) who never used a 12x pack who bad mouth film packs loudly. From all accounts they were right, it was miserable stuff to work with, I think it was brought out trying to compete with 35mm that had 36x available. I remember the 72x Ilford Autowinder 35mm film from the same period on the same film base. It was about as thick as lens cleaning tissue, I quickly decided that carrying two SLR bodies was preferable to using the Autowinder film.
HOWEVER, the 12x Film Pack stuff was not like that! It was on the same film stock as 120 film is. As I said in the above post, I tried a sheet from the 12x Film Pack and it loads easier into the developing tank than regular 4x5 does, just as I remembered it from the 1960's. Stiff enough to work with, but not too stiff.
