A pelican flies over a stormy Gulf of Mexico in a 1937 Kodachrome photograph taken by Luis Marden, one of the color film's early champions at National Geographic magazine.

In 1935, when Marden first saw a demonstration of the film at a Washington, D.C., camera shop, he rushed back to the magazine photo lab to spread the news of the "amazing" medium, as described in the book The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery.

Marden called the new film, which created virtually grainless and vibrant color images, "a photographer's liberation, like being let out of prison."

Today, advances in digital photography have relegated Kodachrome to just a fraction of a percent of Kodak's total sales of still-picture films—prompting the company's June 22 decision to stop making the iconic product.