Polychrome Stencil History
In
the late 1930s Mr. Halpern met Louis Mestre a cigar smoker from Cuba.
They formed a company and with a man; who later had a stencil
factory in Middletown Connecticut, to build the Style stencil
duplicator.
He
hired Fred Pollack, who had made stencils in Austria and started to
coat hand made Japanese yoshino tissue in a loft in lower
Manhattan--near Gramercy Park
where
he lived. The coating solution was prepared in Monmouth NJ,
The
Yoshino tissue was hand made in sheets and girls would hang the
sheets
on
bars which would move them over a coating roller and through a
dryer.
Robert
McCabe was hired to sell the product. Later McCabe became the New
York City Polychrome office manager then moved to Mexico City to
establish Polychrome Mexico to make stencils and offset plates.
In
1946 when I joined Polychrome had moved into gas company property
in Yonkers. It had a one and a half story building at the corner of
(2) Ashburton Ave and Alexander Street and a brick building across
the entrance with sheds adjoining it. Dexter Paper Company who was
making tea bag tissue working with Gestetner learned that using an
uphill Fourdrinier could be used to make a open weave paper with
squarage that could be used for stencils. As this was available in
rolls, with the assistance of Fred Hozeny we built the equipment to
coat and windup the stencils eliminating the girls who mounted the
stencils on the bars. These coaters were designed to coat rolls
wide enough to be split in two to be mounted.As the one coating that
had been used did not have all the properties we wanted Fred Hozeny
and I added three more coating sections to the stencil coating
tunnels. I worked with the lab technicians to develop these
coatings: The main stencilizable coating, a thin coating to minimize
type filling, an anti static coating and a matte finish top coat.
We
prepared the pigments for the stencil coating solutions in the
building across the yard and the coating solutions in the shed next
door. Putting them in drums to transport to the coating room, which
we eventually air conditioned. We had a small kettle in which we
melted the waxes and mixed them with some of the oils.
Originally
the coated rolls were slit, then rolled on a drum and cut to the
proper size to be mounted. Mr. Mestre built a machine to take a roll
of backing sheet paper, oil it cut a thumb hole, perforate it. apply
a glue line and bring the stencil sheet and backing sheet together.
An intermediate sheet such as a carbon paper could be included. I
was then cut 81/2” or 9” wide. It was then sent at a right angle
down a line where the headinf was punched., the backing tab printed,
and the scale printed on the stencil We developed an ink based on
paralac to be able to print the scale on the stencil sheet. Later
Luis Mestre with Ray Lauzon built a machine to apply a sheet of
pliofilm or a pliofilm tab and interleaver over the mounted
stencil.
Originally
most of the sales, besides the New York office were to the government
and private dealers. Mr. Halpern convinced Abe Samuels who owned
Speed-O-Print and made stencils on Larchmont Street in Chicago to
turn over the operation to Polychrome; and sell the equipment and
supplies to Polychrome.
Later
when the A. B. Dick agreement with Gestetner was over. Sigmund
Gestetner arranged for Polychrome to make the stencil for the
American Market.
A
few years later the Vertex Company in Montvalle New Jersey which was
making spirit carbon collating machines, designed stencil mounting
and collating equipment, which combine all the operations in a
straight through process including mounting the pliofilm tab.
Polychrome bought two of these collators.