Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Polychrome Christmas Dinner 1972

I understand that the first Christmas dinner party was held at Mr. Halpern's house, it grew in size as the time went and the venue moved to Tappan Hill restaurant near his house.       In 1965 I first joined the party at this restaurant.     We occupied only one room then but we increased in size and took more and more rooms and eventually we grew out of this restaurant and went to Hilton Hotel near Tappan Zee bridge. (though this is some time much later).      This dinner menu is special as it had an insert showing all the Polychrome facilities then.      Note that the first door prize was an AM-FM Stereo Radio with 8-Track Cartridge player!   See all HERE.


Friday, March 21, 2014

Polygram 1966

Before the Polyworld, there was the Polyline; and before Polyline, there was the Polygram.       I only saved one copy from Jan 1966; probably because it announced the arrival of a certain (young!) chemist from Japan (see page 3) HERE.


Sunday, March 16, 2014

Say hello to R&D folks in '78 and '81

I found two lists of Yonkers R&D personnel.      Many moved on as the time went but the names are very familiar to me and hopefully to some of you who had chance to visit Yonkers or had one of the them visit you.     See how many you recognize.

1978

Chris Bove    
Virginia Bradley
Richard Brown
Robin Duskin
Ross de Rose, JR
Albert Deutsch
Anthony Esposito
Eugene Golda
Diane Grandolfo
Jenchi Huang
Paul Jargiello
Andrew Kish
Nicholas Lamperti
Christopher Lyons
Cromwell Mukai
Takao Nakayama
Anne Papayanakis
Robert Piller
Mario Rufino
Paul Schmidt
Elizabeth Sokolovic
Ken Shimazu
John Smith
Ronald van Vrohees
Alan Wilkes
Cynthia Zapf

And in 1981

Theresa Aftyka
David Blumel
Daniel Bourgeouis
Virginia Bradley
Richard Cohen
Albert Deutsch
Nils Eklund
Claude Estienne
Ralph Gigi
Steven Hirsch
Jenchi Huang
Paul Jargiello
Jerome Kesselman
Camille McQueen
Sunil Prikh
Bharat Patel
Jay Patel
Gus Pelaez
Robert Piller
Donald Reiley
Mario Rufino
Jeseph Scimeca
Rosa Shahbazi
James Shelnut
John Smith
Jane Libby Spearman
Gregory von Gruenberg
Alan Wilkes

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Remembering Ray Lauzon

Ray Lauzon (far left in this picture) was one of Mr. Halpern's early employee and like Willie Boshardt came from an equipment builder headed by an industrial designer Mr. Mestri, a friend of Mr. Halpern.     Ray was Mr. Halpern's all around trouble shooting person and had Mr. Halpern's ear in many areas, mostly in production.       He and I worked closely at one time to resuscitate ailing Polychrome Paper division in Philadelphia, a diazo paper coating company called Speidel.       He died suddenly as a result of a car accident; we were all shocked then as the company was young and we seldom heard someone's passing at Polychrome.


Thursday, March 6, 2014

Meet Mr. Yonezawa

Mr. Teruhiko Yonezawa wondered why a shiny aluminum plate could be imaged, processed and made to run on a printing press.       He was evaluating 3M plates at Fuji Film research lab.     He soon found from his research and from patent documents that the secret was in the treatment of aluminum with silicate.        It was in late 1950's and the Japanese market was poised to undergo a huge technology change from wet plate/deep etch combination to litho film and presensitized plate.        Fuji wanted to be the first in Japan to break into the market but unfortunately 3M already had a general partner.     Mr. Yonezawa's group then found Polychrome's zirconium interlayer patent.        Although he was confident he was able to come up with a technology not covered either by 3M or Polychrome, Dr. Ooba then in charge of new business overrode him to seek license from Polychrome.        Mr. Yonezawa was the leader of the technology transfer team who descended in  Yonkers for weeks to learn details of the plate technology.      On his return, he became the head of Fuji Plate R&D, starting first in Odawara factory where Fuji's first production line was built and then to Fuji Yoshida factory, then probably the world most advanced plate manufacturing plant.           Although one can count numerous technology advancement under his leadership his most significant contribution to the world may be the fact he coined the term "PS plate", a shortened version of "presensitized printing plate", now used world wide.        On his retirement he summarized his life work in a book called "PS plate technology", one of the very few books on presensitized plate's history and technology.         Here is a couple of photos from one of our annual technology exchange meetings, this one in 1978.      


Mr. Yonezawa is far right with Gene Golda, me, Konrad Richter and Simon Chu.



Here, Mr. Yonezawa with me.