Historic photo identified

Dr. Yuji Ooba, son of Dr. Seiichi Ooba of Fuji Photo Film, found photos from early 1960's.       With the help of Mr. Shigeru Ishihara, former executive of Mitsui & Co and current and former Fuji empolyees , Mr. Ishii, Mr. Aso and Mr. Horie, the background of the photo and identification of some of the faces were obtained.

This appears to be from the reception at the old Imperial Hotel hosted by Fuji Photo Film around 1964.
The faces identified so far are; front from left, Dr. and Mrs. Ooba, legendary founder/ then president Mr. Setsutaro Kobayashi, Mr.& Mrs. Halpern, Mrs. Kobayashi, Mr. and Mrs. Kume of Mitsui & Co.
Mr. Ishihara is far right 3rd row and Mrs. Ishihara is 3rd from the right.

Both Mr. Kume and Mr Ishihara were stationed in New York then.       Initial approach to Polychrome was done by Fuji and the follow up was apparently done through Mitsui Trading.    
In the same year a team of Fuji technical personnel visited Yonkers to be trained for the technology
transfer.       Dr. Ooba headed the team and the member lead by Mr. Yonezawa stayed several weeks for the training.
Far left is Mr. Yonezawa, 4th.. Dr. Ooba, Ray Lauzon, Mr. Halpern, Mr. Ikegaya  of Mitsui then Mr. Gumbinner.

Historical activities

Aug 1963...... Licensing Agreement signed

Feb. 1964..... Technical staff visited Polychrome (see above picture)

April 1965.... Odawara PS plate factory completed

Aug. 1954.... Started to sell PS plate

Dec. 1970...  Yoshida Mianami (current ) factory completed

China Connection 4 ..... Behind the scene

No one except for those heavily involve in the negotiation ever saw the signed contract between Polychrome and Chinese.        Actually there were three parties involved; the China National Chemical Construction Company,  a Chinese Government agency responsible for carrying out the 5 year plan the government has established, the Second Film Factory; the  CNCCC designated licensee  and Polychrome.     The package received from Bill Saltzman included a copy of the original license agreement of Dec. 1985 and the follow up agreement to provide additional equipment in October 1992.
At the recent lunch get together with Simon and Jenchi Huang who were very heavily involved in the negotiation at that time together with Bill, both reminisced pretty arduous negotiation in Beijing.      Apparently it was customary in China then to turn off heating at around 10 pm while the negotiation lasted sometime past midnight.         Bill was shivering because of the cold but noticed Simon and Jenchi did not appear to be feeling cold.     He discovered that knowing cold autumn in Beijing, they brought long johns and were less affected by the weather.        Bill was said to have threatened them with law suit should he catch cold!     (Luckily for all Bill Survived without catching cold!)      Long journey to China and to the factory, long negotiation and thorough follow up are all hidden behind the scene.      They can now sit back and laugh at all those trials and tribulations.

Here are the glimpse of original signed contract with Chinse; CNCCC and 2FF

Goodies from Bill Saltzman

Received a package from Bill Saltzman who now resides in Florida .     One of the content was a piece of paper titled Yonkers Telephone Directory which everyone had on one's desk and replaced every year throwing away old ones.         The most used documents in our life but are quickly forgotten that we had such directory.        This one is from the 1991 vintage.       Those who were in the field may have had the similar list at that time.      For detailed image click HERE    Thanks Bill for a fine find!

Strategic planning meeting

After Joe Piot brought in McKinsey & Co. to aid performance of the company, numbers of  "Strategic Planning Meeting" were held.      We can always tell the meeting was such from the paper poster on the wall, favorite of McKinsey.          In this early 1980 R&D planning meeting you could see that this was an internatinal meeting.        Besides Simon Chu, Jim Shelnut, Alan Wilkes, Gene Golda, John Loftus, Jen-chi Huang, Ralph Gigi, Raj Doshi, Gordon Jenkins, Paul Jargiello, Bill Rowe, Delos Bown, Peg Otis, there are Peter Herting and Evangelos Karanastasis from Germany, Steve Brown and Tom Heckels from England, Masatsugu Tanimoto from DIC  Japan.

Farewell to Rich Maxwell

Rich Maxwell  passed away on Friday Aug. 9th.        According to Maria Sibio, Rich started with Polychrome and was part of all the transitions (Sun Chemical, Joint Venture, Kodak, Ryder) while managing the Carol Stream, IL warehouse. 
He was only 55.         Ed Sabol writes: He was my dearest business friends and travel partner. 

Manny Roth writes ”Rich was 55 years old and the funeral is tomorrow (Aug. 14. 2013) and private.”

If you want to send a card, address it to:

The Family of Richard Maxwell Jr.

c/o Brust Funeral Home

414 N Gary Avenue

Carol Stream, IL 60188

RIP

Barbara Viviano's photo collection

Barbara Viviano who worked in Yonkers office and in Ft Lee sent in her collection of various photos.    Thank you Barbara!

Barbara with Thomas Bittner

Sales chief Jim Graves

Jim's successor Ron Muzillo

Paul Nemoda and Vivian Delia

Vivian and  Ross Larrea

Elaine Brooks and Helen Wangenstein in Ft Lee

Karen

Paul

Don Reiley in yellow shirt

Jack Wiethoff and Mike Adelman

1. Gerry Mahoney smiling 

Pat Walsh, Charlie Kreiner, Seth Cross, Larry Golusinski

Cliff Coppinger, Jack Wiethoff and Gary Dolgins

in a birthday card?

Charlie Kreiner

More pics from Jim Shelnut

More R&D pics from Dr. Jim Shelnut.   From Drupa in Dusseldorf, Germany, Osterode and Fuji Yoshida visit.    Thanks Jim!

at the East German border,  

Konrad Richter, Ken Shimazu, Mr. Ohashi of Fuji, Ken Kuhn, 

Jim Shelnut, Evangelos Karanastasis, Gene Golda

 Visit to Fuji Yoshida Factory

Jim with Mr. Yamasue 

Gene Golda in Ginza Tokyo

meeting with Fuji in Osterode

Annette Wedler, Mr. Ohashi of Fuji, Peter Herting, Konrad Richter, Dr. Ken Kuhn,??, Ken Shimazu, Jenchi Huang.    In the second row Gene Golda, Evangelos Karanastasis, Jim Shelnut

Bob Armstrong and Gordon Jenkins

Gordon Jenkins, Jim Shelnut, Bob Armstrong

Yonkers D line, the world's most productive line ... Plate HIstory by Mr. Bob Gumbinner

D line in Yonkers  had to be squeezed in to a small space  just along side of the stencil coaters and had to be folded in the middle.      But this design helped D line to become  the world's most productive PS plate producing machine.      It was fed with an exact width aluminum roll.      The web continuously traveled through various bath, turned around in the middle so that the final coating (two sides) station and cutting and punching station were again at the front so that one operator can run the whole machine.            The finished plates were then immediately packed  and shipped by a few inspectors/packers.   　　　It was Polychrome's first roll to sheet operating type manufacturing line.   Our licensee Fuji Photo Film liked the concept and constructed their first production line in Odawara roll to sheet but straight without folding in the middle.         This design continued to flourish in our factories as well as in licensee's plant
As in case of all the stencil master production facilities, Mr. Bob Gumbinner was the architect of the engineering of the D machine.    He recollects.........

After this C-machine had been in operation for several years. We designed the D machine to make duplicator size offset plates. Based on a suggestion of Ed Fritz. a former vice-president of Enco, we bought a two sided gravure coater to make dual kotes. With the help of Luis Mestre an old American Can punch Press was bought from a used machinery shop on the Bowery. The paper coaters were moved to Spiedel. Because of limited space the tanks were doubled stacked.The unwind axle was in about the middle of the room. This was followed by a polyphosphate degrease--etch tank with a Teflon heating coil. Then a rinse section followed by DuPont potassium per sulfate solution at room temperature to desmutthe plate without nitric or chromic acids. After rinsing the web was brought over two rollers to reverse the direction, These had electric eye side controls to keep the web of aluminum in the middle. Originally the aluminum went into a 160 degree potassium zirconium fluoride tank followed by a hydrolysis tank. Then a distilled water rinse and a dryer section. The web went through the coaters and then vertically through the dryer which was exhausted to the roof. To have room for drying the ceiling in this area was removed. After the turnaround roll the aluminum web went under a floating balance roller and then along with a black polyvinyl coated interleaver paper moved the correct distance with a feed mechanism in to the punch press where the mounting holes were punched and the sheet cut from the roll. There it was picked up on a belt and moved into a stacker with a counter. There was considerable difficulty coating both sides of the plates. The gravure rolls were replaced with special rubber coating rollers . These rollers were offset from each other and set in pans. The formulations were adjusted to obtain the correct weight coatings. Samples were checked on the line and in the lab. If the rolls started to swell we would ground them.