Early days of Clark, Bill Rowe and Bill Towns

Bill Rowe joined Polychrome in 1970 and headed the resin group research.       When the Clark facility was obtained for the film manufacturing, he moved the resin research group to Clark facility which prior to Polychrome's take over was a resin research lab for the Celanese Corporation; he was promoted to Assistant Vice President in charge of the Clark facility.       His major contribution to the company was his knowledge and interest in urethane chemistry and introduced urethane oligomer type composition  in our negative plate formula.        His influence remains long after his 1982  retirement in various offset plate coating formulae.     He has produced a urethane oligomer based flexo plate called Flexomer.    However, we were not geared for the production so the technology was later sold to Rhone Poulanc.         Take a look at a Flexomer brochure HERE.             See
 his  retirement luncheon pictures.   (Thanks AJ for the pictures and thanks Saraya for Bill's work info)

Today he is 93 and lives in New Jersey.

Bill Towns built his photographic solution business, Townley Chemical,  in Long Island focused on liquid toner business.....  copiers using liquid toner was plentiful then.       But as the liquid toner business  started to decline due to the advent of inexpensive dry toner copiers, he saw a writing on the wall for his business and called us to see if we were interested in buying his business.         We evaluated his business but we did not see much future in the liquid tone business in addition  the Clark facility where we contemplated moving his mixing tanks and  the filling station was not explosion proof as required for the liquid toner business.          We offered to buy his hardwares and started liquid photographic chemistry business under his supervision.          This was fortunate for Polychrome as the Clark facility did not have other revenue during the construction of film manufacturing facility and we were able to consolidate high margin solution chemicals from Yonkers plant as well as add new volume product such as  litho developer and litho fixer.        Having established chemistry business for  Polychrome Bill left the  company after the arrival of Marv Lieberman as the general manager of the Clark facility.