Peggy and Peggy

Peggy Otis came to Polychrome as a summer student  and after a while became Simon's administrative assistant.         She was the first one to greet you if you wonder off from Mr. Halpern's office to the lab area where Simon had the corner office.      Her suggestion which was accepted officially to name a new long running negative plate  as "Quamtum" would be long remembered.       Peg was interested in becoming a police officer and took a few law enforcement courses early on but found her calling in office environment.                         She moved on to Consumer's Union and continue to work as  am administrative assistant there.    (She was a quick learner and an efficient assistant, she says she enjoys coaching new starting assistants now.)

Peggy Arnt was a paralegal secretary in the legal department.      (Look!...... that's the famous IBM Selectric typewrite she is using !)        It was she not the other Peggy who went to police department in Yonkers as a legal secretary after the legal department moved to Ft. Lee.     When she passed away sometime later, the Yonkers Police Department gave a full escort to her funeral proceeding.    

Pictures from 1984

These are the photos from April 1984 when DIC technical staff visited Yonkers.

Simon Chu, Mr. Konishi, Mr. Yao, Mr. Susa

Mr. Suwa, Dr. Shigemitsu, Mr. Konishi

Mr. Konishi, Dr. Shigemitsu, Ken Shimazu, Mr. Irie then president of DIC America

Simon Chu, Mr. Yao, Gene Goldan Mr. Konishi, Ken Shimazu

Mr. Suwa, Gene Golda, Mr. Konishi, Mr. Yao

Annual Report 1984

Here is the 1984 Annual Report.   Polychrome was 50 yeas old!    See detail HERE

Annual Report 1983

Here is the 1983 Annual Report.              See detail HERE.

Mr. Halpern, after Polychrome

Mr. Kei Takahashi, then head of DIC America, heard a rumor that Polychrome was looking for an "investor" so he sent his deputy Mr. Junya Ono to Yonkers to meet Mr. Halpern.         When Mr. Halpern proposed that DIC invest in Polychrome, he probably thought he could get another investor to balance the ever stronger Rhone Poulanc's influence.        Due to the expansion into the film manufacturing venture, Polychrome was short on fund and he relied on Rhone Poulanc for the financial help.        Rhone Poulanc by then apparently was tired of being a major investor without real management input and was said to be interested in increasing its stake in Polychrome to replace the management.          Mr. Halpern, of course, did not like the idea and as before looked for another "investor".         But this time, Mr. Halpern's scheme overran his plan.        Mr. Kawamura, US educated head of DIC, had an eye in expanding his business outside of Japan and had already purchased the Kohl and Madden Ink Company and offered to buy the entire Polychrome stock rather than being a small share investor.           The American Stock Exchange listed Polychrome share jumped to the final $28/share after the bidding war and except for a few percent of shares Mr. Halpern owned all the shares were tendered to DIC and Polychrome became DIC's subsidiary company.      Mr. Halpern continued to run the company but soon felt panicky about his remaining shares.       He thought  DIC might not buy his share in future and his holding may become worthless, he thought.       He flew to Tokyo demanding his share be bought right away by DIC.       Mr. Hideshi Iwata who raised all the money for the Polychrome purchase  scrambled to raise additional fund DIC did not expect to need for a while.         This somewhat soured the relationship between Mr. Halpern and DIC and within half a year Mr. Halpern left the company.           He then set up a consulting company in Dobbs Ferry, near Yonkers, with some of the long term ex-Polychrome employees like Bob Gumbinner, Willie Boshardt and some young ones like, Don Riley and Teresa Wasiak.           After the customary 2 year or so cooling non competing period, the company, Universal High Technology, showed its product at Graphexpo in Chicago.           A few small offset plates were probably imported from overseas but soon the company quietly folded.             Mrs. Halpern who was much older than Mr. Halpern passed away  under the care of a live in male nurse who then became in charge of Mr. Halpern.         Many of the long term employees still had a good relationship with Mr. Halpern.            But one day, Bob Gumbinner who lived only a few houses away and was constantly in and out of Mr. Halpern's house to look after him found that his key no longer works and the male nurse prohibited him to enter the house to see Mr. Halpern.             We then found out that Mr. Halpern adopted the male nurse as his son and both moved away to the west (Arizona?)              We later learned that he passed away when he was around 94 but details are not known.          The millions of dollars he accumulated through building Polychrome part of which he intended to donate to schools are probably in the hand of the adopted male nurse.          This is a somewhat sad ending of otherwise very successful entrepreneur.    He still left his legacy, Polychrome Corporation affecting us all even today.    

Annual Report 1982

Here is the Annual Report 1982         See detail HERE

Taj Mahal, Jay, Nick and JB

In one of the weekly "donuts" technology review I lamented the fact that our positive thermal plate was not robust; the coating is attacked by developer and if we make the coating stronger, the development speed goes  way down.... and wished we could have a developer resistant layer on top.       Obviously a lot of technical people realized this and came up with many solutions including creating barrier with moisture absorption, surfactant in the coating which migrates to the top, etc.           Jay Patel's solution was simple, overcoat thermal positive with a developer resistant layer.          He and Nick Merchant came back with a two layer structure which could be soaked in the developer, have the developer penetrate the layers and and the coating brushed off in the rinsing section.        This was brilliant as it minimized the use of developer to a bare minimum.  But the solid particle collection in the water rinse section proved to be a problems.        Jay then made a very significant observation that the plate with certain composition could be developed with a negative type developer.        The positive thermal plate was just like a typical conventional positive plate requiring highly alkaline positive type developer which must be controlled on daily basis.         European and Japanese customers are used to this control but not the North American customers majority of who are accustomed to using negative and more tolerant  developers.         Thus the Polychrome's first two layer positive thermal plate with negative developer was born.             In honor of Jay and Nick who originated this work we started to use the code name Taj Mahal (Tore Harms is credited to picking this rather unusual two word code name.)

The thermal positive then (and still is to some extent) had a weak surface susceptible to scratch.       The analog positive plate for example could be processed number of times in a processor without showing any sign of scratch while positive thermal plate could be easily scratched even after the second pass through the processor.         JB Huang then made a significant observation saying if the analog positive coating is so resistant why not use it as the top coating and that was exactly the way the final Taj Mahal formulation was approached.          Commercialization  had to wait long after the Kodak Polychrome joint venture was formed as the 2nd coating capability came in slowly.        Opposition and road blocks offered by  Kodak technical/commercial people to the project did not help speed up the project either.     But the merit of Taj Mahal was gradually appreciated, gained momentum, manufacturing capability added and  further research made especially in Gunma.           The Taj Mahal is now trade named  Sword and is one of the major product line within  Kodak worldwide.