Thomas Bittner Business Update '94

This is one of the video rescued when the Carlstad Lab was closed.    In this video, Thomas Bittner, then president, reviews '94 business upto April (so this must have been made around May '94.        In his comment he describes the smooth transition in US of pumice grained base to electrolytic grain, decline of camera film and increase of imagesetter film, etc.

Clark lab photo '87

Penny Mullen sent in these photos from Clark lab taken in 1987.      Faces are soo familiar.. but names and faced do not come together!       Mr. Maruko in the center photo was from DIC Japan, he liked the life in US so much that he volunteered to stay in DIC's US arm right after his tour in Clark.

Thanks Penny for sending in these pictures.

Enrique Levy, our 3rd president

Enrique used to say jokingly that when he arrived from Cuba to a land of opportunity, he was met with a host family with a small car without enough room for him.     He found himself on a lap of a young lady and thought to himself what a land of opportunity this was!        His another story was when he took a citizenship exam, one of the question was to name 3 famous generals.     His answer, he said was, General Motors, General Electric and General Mills!        He arrived Polychrome via DuPont to realize Mr. Halpern's dream of producing our own lith film and worked in the chemical engineering group till he was promoted to an Assistant VP and became under Wes Hennessey a Senior Corporate VP in charge of Film Manufacturing.     He became President in 1978 and saw DIC take over of Polychrome in 1979.         When Joe Piot was appointed president by DIC, Polychrome was reorganized into several units and he was appointed to the president of Polychrome International and Film Division.        After leaving Polychrome in late 80's he founded the Photech Imaging Systems
 He was the founder and CEO of Photech Imaging Systems and later joined Xerox Graphic Systems, Worldwide Process Technology, Advanced NMR, Advanced Mammography Systems and Caprius Inc.  He has also served as a business consultant in the area of Healthcare Services.       In recent telephone call I found him busy with volunteering for the Jewish cause and is currently nursing his cancer treatment.

My Clark story in early 1980 part 3 The staff

Max van Dam who was trained in Europe passed away by the time I came to Clark.  So as far as I could determine all the R&D staff received on the job training on the intricacy of silver halide photography in Clark, except for Gene and John da Silva.      John was another eccentric but capable chemist who could come up with a good experimental results without being able to explain his thought process or the reason behind his decision.           John Pilot was the most reliable and steady organic chemist.      And as I jokingly said that an excellent photographic chemist often comes from an organic chemist, he indeed became a top notch photographic chemist.            At much later time when Clark was closed down after the Kodak Polychrome joint venture, he was the one I sought out to stay in our lab.         Steve Gallo became a key person to connect R&D and the plant.       He worked not only on product development but also on scale up and trouble shooting.       Through his close relationship with plant he earned huge respect and trust by the production personnel... a great asset for R&D to work harmoniously with plant.
Penny Mullen stands out among many excellent technicians we had.      She was working for John da Silva on cubic crystal based new rapid access film emulsion.          I remember we were under heavy pressure to produce results and I was very impressed to learn that she was the one who took initiative in an experiment and completed the test late into nights.    
We also had numbers of DIC chemists who came to work with us side by side.      Couple of them liked to work in the US and decided to stay but most went back to become key technical personnel with in DIC later on.

1989 Clark picnic

These are the pictures from Steve Gallo.     We used to have a summer cook out at Clark.   Here is Marv Lieberman with Barbara Vignola and Ian Ward

Here is Peter Herting from GmbH who spent a few years in Clark as a part of technical exchange.

Executive chefs Don Wheeler and Paul Reilly with Burt Waxman.

Thanks Steve for the contribution.