1988 Clark Christmas Party photo

Steve Gallo sent me the following photos from 1988 Clark Christmas party.     Clark Christmas party used to be a big fun event with food and dancing.     

   

 Ken Shimazu, Rose Grazewski (QC Supervisor), and old friend from DIC Mr. Naoiki Obi.

 Cio (QC) sitting down

 Raj Doshi R & D Accountant, me (Steve Gallo), Al Aguero (emulsion chemist), and Dr. John Pilot. 

Thank you Steve for sharing this photo.

My Clark story in early 1980 part 2 Gene Wilkerson

Both Henry Levy and Gene Wilkerson came from duPont then a major force in litho film.        Henry the engineer headed the film plant project and built Clark film coater patterned after duPont line.      Gene the chemist designed the film.        Apparently Gene was a promising and capable chemist at duPont but was unceremoniously cut from employment while he was being sent to a university by duPont.        This embittered Gene and he vowed to come up with products competitive to duPont offerings.         And he had done it almost single handedly with young, enthusiastic but inexperienced chemists and technicians who joined Clark laboratory.          Gene, however, hated structure, meetings and authority.           In early days of Clark (before my time!) he must have operated his lab without these impediment to slow down his research.           Once the factory was established and was in operation, however, his style of R&D management started to crush with Clark management.         Clark management needed a cooperative R&D management willing to do trouble shooting along with new products development.         Gene, however brilliant he may have been as a new product development chemist, clearly suffered a "big company" syndrome acquired at duPont not to go beyond departmental boundary.          He used to  come in late in the afternoon and worked through the night claiming that this way he is not burdened by interruptions from attending meetings, taking calls, etc.         We had to wait the arrival of Burt Waxman to form a real Clark team but that was a bit later.    
I did find Gene to be an interesting and knowledgeable individual, I used to sit with him till late or early in the morning to talk or actually listen to him talk on various technical issues.         I must say I enjoyed working with him and was sad to hear he was gone not from losing his consciousness at high altitude when he flew small airplane (as I often feared) but peacefully at his home.    

Polychrome magnifier

Remember Polychrome 12x magnifier we used to carry around to see whether we could see fine dots and see whether the shadow is still open?       Jeff Jacobson recently found one.        This was mainly for plates and  there were higher magnification ones for film to see if the dots had a clear or fuzzy fringes.       In the era of digital platemaking, film magnifiers are no longer needed but this magnifier for plates could still be in operation even today.  

Wes Hennessey our 2nd President

Mr. Wesley Hennessey became our 2nd president after Mr. Halpern moved himself up to a chairman.    Prior to coming to Polychrome he was the dean of Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science.        On leaving Columbia in 1975 he joined Polychrome and served as the president for 2 years.        Here is the photos from our trip to Japan with Prof. Inoue and Simon Chu.  

Wes Hennessey loved Nikon and  was delighted to find an ultra telephoto lens in Japan for his Nikon.

This is in Ginza district in Tokyo with Bill Saltzman and Simon Chu

His obituary on New York Times is HERE.

My Clark story in early 1980 part 1 DIC became unhappy

After the successful bid to buy Polychrome, DIC management had a big plan for Polychrome future.    Due to the contractual reason, PS plate business was off limit to DIC in Japan.    But in film, it was a different story, there was no restriction so that the first move DIC proposed was to test market Polychrome film in Japan which backfired hugely.      The first sample box of film tested at the most trusted important customer of DIC contained a racial notes inserted by someone in the finishing/inspection department of Clark plant.        This of course angered the customer of DIC and gave a poor impression of Clark plant to DIC management.          It also turned out that the Clark film did not fit Japanese market either.        Japanese market was dominated by Fuji who designed  their film like Eastman Kodak film while Clark film was patterned after then popular duPont film.         DIC management had to save their face and decided assgin numbers of chemists to silver halide technology  and hire ex Konica chemists as  consultants  to boost its "technology level".       Although the purchase of Polychrome (and others such as Kohl and Madden, Sun Chemical and Rheicold Chemical) was engineered by Mr. S. Kawamura, the president, DIC's operation was still very much influenced by its founder Mr. K. Kawamura, the senior advisor.       And it was Senior Kawamura's modus operandi to invest in technical personnel and fund the research out of his own budget separate from the operational division's budget till the division realizes the fruit of the research. (or till the division head is "encouraged" to find ways to absorb them.)   So the extra help in research we received in Clark was not funded by Polychrome but by DIC.    The research started in Tokyo and then the staff was moved one by one to Clark.
That was the background of when I was appointed to be the part time film R&D director.        My appointment was most likely not because I was recognized as a competent film chemist but probably because I was a Japanese speaking chemist who could be a buffer and an intermediary between  the many DIC  chemists and the Polychrome management.               Although I was hired as an electrostatic imaging specialist in the beginning, my basic training was in the photographic science and engineering at the only university in Japan where they had a department specialized  in this small and obscure discipline.
So it turns out that I was not unprepared to understand the issues and the chemistry behind them.        

Dr. Haruo Takenaka, speed and vacuum draw down

Dr. Haruo Takenaka is not a household name at least in Polychrome, but he has made an important contribution to Fuji, Polychrome and the graphic arts industry all together.       When he became in charge of Fuji Yoshida plate manufacturing plant, he asked his staff to go out in the field to do a time study of work flow at customers to see where the bottleneck in production was.        The study was summarized in a Pareto chart (one of the seven most important tools in Quality Control in which he was familiar) and it revealed that the most time consuming part of the printing production process was 1) page make up 2) vacuum drawdown time and 3) exposure time.         The conclusion out of this study was that the page make up would be outside of their plate business so that they (Fuji) should concentrate in their effort to speed up the vacuum drawdown and the exposure speed.         Thus their new vacuum drawdown technology (spray coating of dots on plate surface) was developed and the plate sensitivity was increased.         We at Polychrome was a beneficiary of the new vacuum drawdown technology as our licensing agreement included a provision that we could use any technology developed by Fuji and our plants were quickly equipped with such spraying equipments.           Dr. Takenaka was not a graduate of one of the prestigious  universities almost all Fuji executives come from and his assignments at Fuji tended to be in the non traditional (non silver photography that is) area such as in polyester base, PS plate and then copying machine (Xerox), nevertheless he seems to have made a great contribution to Fuji and to the each industry he has touched.         No wonder he was invited back after his short stay in the then subsidiary of Fuji...Fuji Xerox to the position of an executive vice president of Fuji Film.        We only met him for a few years while he was in Fuji Yoshida, but we were very quickly impressed by his in depth knowledge and understanding of the plate technology despite of his new and short exposure to PS plate business.         We were all saddened when he passed away unexpectedly while he was still relatively young as we come to respect him and considered him to be a great friend of Polychrome.

Dr. Haruo Takenaka, then in charge of Fuji Yoshida plant

at one of the Polychrome-Fuji technology exchange meetings,

Dr. Takenaka at right and

from left, Simon Chu, Konrad Richter, Gene Golda, Mr. Yonezawa ( of Fuji)

Mrs. Freda Bonime Halpern

We know very little about Mrs. Halpern except that she worked for Con Ed when she was young and with her $500, Mr. Halpern started Polychrome.        The first Polychrome logo with three crossed ink knife was said to have been designed by Mrs. Halpern.     She  was the company secretary for a long time but was very quiet and 

remained behind Mr. Halpern.      But as Simon Chu recalls, when there was an opportunity she did not hesitate to speak her own mind eloquently.      

Mrs. Freda Halpern with Mr. Halpern

M

She was a good sport to try her hand on a Japanese style Korean barbecue!

Mrs. Halpern in her youth 

contribution of Erica Bonime her great niece

Thanks Erica