The stock was of standard gauge and thickness, but it had a photographic emulsion coated on both sides of the film base instead of on one surface only.
The resulting superimposed pairs of transparent single-color images, projected onto a screen or viewed directly, could reproduce a limited but useful and sometimes very pleasing range of color.
It was mainly in the specifics of the chemistry, apparatus and procedures used to convert the silver images into color-toned ones that the several commercial processes based on the use of duplitized film differed significantly.
The double emulsion increased the overall sensitivity of the film, reducing the X-ray exposure required.
Duplitized film of any kind was not suitable for ordinary camera use, due to the loss of image quality that would result from the light becoming diffused as it passed through the several layers, but with X-ray shadows that was not a problem.