(FORTUNE Magazine) – The evocative power of the pictures in this portfolio is a tribute to a golden age of color photography that began in the mid-1930s. The spark was the invention of Kodachrome, a new type of film that made possible a rich, dramatic realism. The potential menace of the smoking chemical plant on the left, for instance, almost makes you hold your breath. Kodachrome was created by a pair of musicians who doubled as photo buffs. Hired by Eastman Kodak, the two devised a way to retain the clarity of black and white film while shedding the muted hues and occasional fuzziness of previous color photography. They did so by combining three layers of black and white film, coating each with a color-sensitized emulsion, and adding dyes during a 28-step developing process. Magazines leaped on the new technology. Fortune, not surprisingly, wanted to portray U.S. industry, itself facing a new golden age as the Old World order began to crumble. All the companies shown here and on the following pages were destined to be included among the FORTUNE 500 or its global version. Those lists, of course, like bumpier times for Kodak itself, still lay in the out-of-focus future.