Thankfully, we’ll always have that wonderful Paul Simon song by which to remember it.

Kodachrome was on the market for 74 years–all those birthday parties and National Geographic covers. But you can’t stop progress, as Steve McCurry, who snapped what may well be the most famous Kodachrome photo ever (above), notes.

“The early part of my career was dominated by Kodachrome, and I reached for that film to shoot some of my most memorable images,” said McCurry. “While Kodachrome Film was very good to me, I have since moved on to other films and digital to create my images. In fact, when I returned to shoot the ‘Afghan Girl’ 17 years later, I used Kodak’s E100VS film to create that image, rather than Kodachrome Film as with the original.”

[Image credit: Steve McCurry via Wikipedia]

Thankfully, we’ll always have that wonderful Paul Simon song by which to remember it.

Kodachrome was on the market for 74 years–all those birthday parties and National Geographic covers. But you can’t stop progress, as Steve McCurry, who snapped what may well be the most famous Kodachrome photo ever (above), notes.

“The early part of my career was dominated by Kodachrome, and I reached for that film to shoot some of my most memorable images,” said McCurry. “While Kodachrome Film was very good to me, I have since moved on to other films and digital to create my images. In fact, when I returned to shoot the ‘Afghan Girl’ 17 years later, I used Kodak’s E100VS film to create that image, rather than Kodachrome Film as with the original.”

[Image credit: Steve McCurry via Wikipedia]

Together, they created the 25-volume “Stereoscopic Atlas of Human Anatomy,” which was published in 1962 and was soon out of print.

Now Stanford University’s School of Medicine is putting the astonishing images online, working with Silicon Valley’s eHuman. Right now, the Times reports, just the head and neck collection is online for $8 a month, but there is more to come.

It seems well worth it. As Schwartz writes:

“Even without the stereoscopic boost, the images are stunning, though perhaps not best examined over breakfast. Blood vessels cluster in a cobwebby tangle along a spinal column, and pelvic bones stand out like butterflies against a stark black field. The back of a man’s head, its layers of flesh and bone sliced away, shows the excavation from the scalp down to the brain as if looking at a stratified canyon wall. The original Kodachrome slides, carefully preserved, still provide images of tremendous clarity.”

He notes that it will eventually be possible for those with special glasses to see the images in 3-D too.

Google (GOOG) has been long tinkering on a version of human-body mapping, dubbed Google Body, a concept much like Google Earth, with many partners including eHuman and Stanford.

But this work–done well before anyone had the sophisticated tech tools we have now–seems just perfect.

Below are some pictures by William B. Gruber from the Bassett Collection: