Polychrome headquarter had a nice cafeteria where everyone from different departments mingled and sat together for lunch and coffee. Mike Adelman then in charge of marketing sat down with me one day and challenged me and said "why don't you come up with a real camera speed plate!" To come up with a completely new system would have taken years of research so I replied almost jokingly that I had a ready answer and wrote a scheme on the back of paper napkin to show him the concept. This was in early 1990's and the background of his asking this question was that we had a system division called Opticopy and Rachwal system both using photographic film and a camera speed plate was thought to expand the market significantly. The system I proposed was a simple combination of plate and film emulsion. Just prior to this period I was asked to direct R&D and was quite familiar with what we can do with the photographic emulsion. Of course the combination of two known system is not an earthshaking innovation but there was no other camera speed system available. (and even to date such system does not exist) It is like if there are no other audio entertainment systems around, we should pursue radio-casett combination! Mike was immediately supportive of the concept; so a positive plate from Yonkers and a photographic emulsion from Clark was quickly combined to make first samples. Bob Hallman coined the internal code name CTX to indicate cooperation of Yonkers, Clark and Osterode R&D; it eventually established as the trade name. Big issue was production of such product. Clearly a hard aluminum plate and a soft photographic emulsion do not mix well on ordinary production line. Luckily at that time Dr. Harald Baumann who joined us from Orwo in East Germany described Orwo's glass plate coating capability. A special purpose dimensionally stable photographic glass plate was being made there. Since Dr. Baumann used to be the R&D director, he was able to organize a successful trial coating there and a few initial production. Again fortunately we also had by then the Quadrimetal production line in France where a large bi and tri metal plates were coated sheet by sheet. Since this plant had enough idle capacity this new project was welcomed readily. So we were extremely lucky to find a ready production line for such a demanding coating. We were able to coat very large (60") plate and were used by customers using large plate printing books and posters. By this time our attention was drawn to the emerging digital laser plate making system. Kalle was pushing N-90 and Howson was offering their Silverlith plate. We were just in time to claim the third and different approach. Our selling point was that ours was the only camera speed plate with conventional plate performance on press.
Our big break came with the Linotype Hell laser platemaker whose internal test showed that ours outperformed others and they made our plate as their preferred plate. At the 1995 Drupa, we had three major digital platemakers; Linotype Hell, Creo and Gerber. An industry expert said at that time to go to Polychrome booth to see all the digital systems. Another break was at the RR Donnelly Portland where the first CTX line with Creo platemaker performed well against N-90.
The CTX received the Intertech award in 1994.
HERE is the link to the CTX news/ CTXtra published internally and distributed to limited number of those involved in the project. It shows trials and tribulations in detail but also shows the triumph brought by numbers of dedicated Polychromers. Thanks all for helping Polychrome join the big league with real digital plate just in time.
This is the only brochure I could find
HERE is the rest.
