Stencil
Manufacturing ( part 5)
Mr.
Halpern obtained two major customers, who manufactured stencil
duplicators. The first was Speed-O-Print. Speed-O-Print made a
regular size and a small note size hand -operated Stencil
Duplicator. Speed-O-Print had been mounting their stencils. Mr.
Halpern sold Abe Samuels, the owner of Speed-O-Print, that
Polychrome should do this. At the time Speed-O-Print was moving to a
building at 1801 W Larchmont, Chicago, IL, which they purchased from
Bell and Howell. Polychrome bought the equipment and stock. One
of
Speed-O-Print’s employee who printed the scale on the stencil using
a 11 by 19 Multilith which was converted to print from the blanket
cylinder joined Polychrome.
Abe
Samuels was a big time gambler. He had owned 15 percent of the
Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Los Vegas. He took us to dinner at
Gibys a restaurant in the loop on the Chicago River. He ate little
but placed bets. He gave college football players summer jobs.
Mr.
Halpern had met Sigmund Gestetner. Gestetner was the largest seller
of Stencil Duplicating machines outside of the United States.
Gestetner had made an agreement with A B Dick in the early 1930’s
whereby Gestetner would not sell in the United States and Dick would
not sell in Europe. When this agreement expired, Gestetner arranged
to work with Polychrome to supply them with Gestetner labeled
stencils for the United States market. They rented space in one of
the Alexander Carpet Shop Buildings on Nepperhan Ave. Later
Gestetner erected a building on part of the property which the Boyce
Thomas Institute sold, when they moved their research to upstate New
York in conjunction with Cornell University.