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Is it possible that the dyes just aren't as stable as perhaps they were once thought to be? If you noticed a badly faded slide from 1939 in 1993 (54 years elapsed time) it's not really a stretch to imagine that someone (such as myself) could find Kodachrome photographs from 1947 or so to 1953 that are faded now, in 2016.
If I had to make a wild ass guess as to why I have faded Kodachrome, I'd say it's more likely an issue of quality control. Kodachrome, in any of the iterations, was a very difficult film to properly develop. I've spoken to a retired chemist from Kodak who said they LOATHED working on experimental Kodachrome film because someone would have to attempt, usually in vain, to develop small batches by hand. My understanding is that Kodachrome development for the masses was done with large machines in regional Kodak facilities. These machines had electromechanical and electronic timers to control the various stages. Couple the possibility of a timer failure with a bad batch of some chemical, and a notoriously exacting devlopment process, and you could theoretically wind up with a group of less stable slides or prints. No process being done on an industrial type scale is going to be done perfectly, one hundred percent of the time...
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