Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Mr. Robert Gumbiner now 96, the architect of Polychrome Engineering

Mr. Guminner beams broadly in these pictures from his 95 years old birthday party held last year.      Although he now lives in an assisted living housing, his mind is still as sharp as he was during his Polychrome days.        Although he was my first contact at Polychrome, the one who offered me the job and met me and my wife at the JFK airport on Oct 25, 1965 with Mr. Halpern, I do not know much about his background.          He was one of the very early employees of Mr. Haplern but he kept his background rather vague to all of us perhaps because of his involvement with the Manhattan Project during the WWII on which he will not talk about long after the war perhaps still honoring the secrecy agreement he had .        One can only surmise that he was a brilliant engineer to be tapped for the job.         Walking around Yonkers plant one could see his fingerprint all over the production lines .         All automated one-of-a-kind stencil packaging line must have been his brainchild.       He was probably a one man engineering dept. for a long time during the formative Polychrome years and must have contributed a great deal starting from a scratch (batch process0 to completely automated line both in stencil and plate line (D line and on).            He was my boss for a long time and I was always amazed how quickly he reads my report which I labored to write.          He was a dedicated lieutenant for Mr. Halpern and he too resigned when Mr. Halpern resigned from his post and joined his new company called Universal High Technology.           He retired in Virginia and enjoys the company of his son Fred and his niece AnnJ.


With Fred


with AnnJ  and Fred