Dr. Bown joined Polychrome in 1966 and became the head of R&D, he soon showed his leadership by examples of hard working. It was just the time our partner Fuji developed positive sensitizer which was outside of then strong Kalle patent. He had worked day and night and on many occasions over the weekend to get the required sensitizer synthesized in his lab. Some of the plates made in our Yonkers and Osterode production line actually used sensitizer handmade by him within the lab. (This tradition actually continued later in our lab. When we needed new resin for the thermal plate developed by My Nguyen, it was S. Saraya and his assistants who made it within the lab and later by Mr. Hayakawa in Gunma to do the similar practical speedy new product development process.)
I did not have synthetic background so I could not offer him any help then but I was able to make contribution in the use of sensitizer in actual plate making and in the evaluation so I often worked side by side late in the night or over the weekend. One anecdote I told numbers of times later on was that I developed lash from being exposed to this environment (probably from some special solvent he used.) When I asked him what to do, he said that I should have a drink and go to sleep. I obliged and had a few bottle of beer and the lash went away. However, I learned subsequently that he was a Mormon and when he said a drink he meant milk not alcohol!
His work started in the corner of Yonkers production plant actually mushroomed to a very substantial business in Europe and then worldwide for a multibillion dollar business. On his retirement party (from the lab and to move to the plate marketing) I commented that by then his contribution was over a billion dollars in sales. By now it must have grown to tens of billions of dollars.
Some may remember him as the inventor of a unique upright small plate processor called PC-11. Small duplicator size plates were generally processed by hand then and was not well controlled. When he moved to head plate marketing, he quickly saw the need for an inexpensive, maintenance-free processor with small foot print. He solved the problem and produced a vertical dip tank type processor in his garage at home as we had no way of prototype building within our lab. An exposed plate was simply dropped in a small vertical tray and a pair of rollers simply squeezed the plate dry as it comes out of the tank. There was no need for a complicated replenishment of developer solution, only a minimum moving parts and this brilliantly conceived plate processor made an important impact in our small size plate market.
Although he held PhD from MIT, he was never a chemist just to give instructions to his assistants. As this episode highlights, he liked to get his hands dirty so to speak and get the results quickly.
After his real retirement, Simon drafted him to help China project and he impressed Chinese friends with his very high work ethics and hard work. With his Boy Scout Master background he did not mind traveling and staying where accommodation then was not yet up to American standard. Some of his American engineer assistants complained about the condition but he apparently told him it is just like a Boy Scout outing so do not complain!
His actual retirement was in his native Utah where he enjoyed skiing. Unfortunately, when I spoke to him a few years ago he said he became blind and he never picked up his phone afterwards again.
Dr. Delos Bown
My wife, Dr. Bown and Mrs. Bown