Unlike all other modern color films, in which colors (or dye couplers) are layered in the film itself, Kodachrome is black-and-white when initially exposed, and the three primary colors are added in development steps. This process makes it far more difficult to develop; in fact, only one lab in the world, Dwayne's Photo, in Parsons, Kan., still processes it. The lab will continue through 2010, and has a home page message mourning the loss of the iconic film.

Kodak hastens to quell the concerns of customers who persist in shooting film, pointing to its new professional still films, and insisting the company will stay in the film biz "as far into the future as possible." But this is one more indication that businesses have lost the will to support historically important, but unprofitable, product lines; even if, as with Kodak, the products were only made in one plant, once a year. According to Mary Jane Hellyar, the outgoing president of Kodak's Film, Photofinishing and Entertainment Group, if the company has "common components and common design and common chemistry that let us build multiple films off of those same components, then we're in a much stronger position to be able to continue to meet customers' needs."

If a once-a-year film can be discontinued despite its firm position in popular culture, what does this mean for more labor-intensive products? A recent expose of the continued production of Ralcorp Holdings (NYSE: RAH) Grape Nuts in the Wall Street Journal has me wondering if that strangely iconic cereal won't be discontinued, too. And how many other oddly memorable but not exactly brilliantly profitable products might be left behind by the death of sentimentality?

In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the film was integral to the company's business plan. It was the first commercially successful color film and was so wrapped up in American culture that a 1973 Paul Simon song used the word as its title and metaphor, with the lyrics, "Kodachrome / They give us those nice bright colors / They give us the greens of summers / Makes you think all the world's a sunny day... I love to take a photograph / So mama don't take my Kodachrome away." One article hearkening the end of the film calls it "the vivid film that captured the youth of baby boomers," and indeed, it has an unwavering place in the history of photography; not only because of the many camping trips and baby steps immortalized with it, but also because of the haunting photo of an Afghan refugee girl, shot on Kodachrome by photojournalist Steve McCurry, the cover image of an issue of National Geographic in 1985.

Kodak has requested that McCurry shoot one of the last rolls of Kodachrome and donate the images to the George Eastman House museum. And after a few months when the retail stock runs out, the only revenues it will see from its first and most important still picture film will be those from its museum admission.

Sentimentality will live on, but not in Eastman Kodak's operating expenses.