POLYCHROME People 5

POLYCHROME People 5          as remembered by Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Of course we did hire some very competent people. One person, Howard Horton, was hired as sales manager. This was at the time we were working with Kodak on plates for their Verifax copier. I was present in Mr. Halpern’s house when he interviewed Howard Horton and told him that he would have a free hand to run the sales department. Since sales were Mr. Halpern’s forte, this did not happen. Mr. Horton left after six months.

James Graves, who started with Polychrome first as a salesman and then the manager of our Baltimore Office, became the Vice-President for sales. Frank Niemeyer and then Seth Cross were competent Advertising Managers. Bernard Gold was hired as our Chief Accountant and became a Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Simon Chu, who Mr. Halpern got in touch with from Simon’s Uncle Bill Moran, was a excellent Chemist and became a Vice President. I hired Dr. Delos Bown when the American Chemical Society had their annual meeting in New York City. I had rented a room to interview candidates in a hotel. I went home at night. When I returned in the morning my papers were gone. Since I did not sleep there, housekeeping threw them away. After much effort I was able to retrieve them. We were fortunate in employing Leo Golusinsk, who had been a General Foreman at Alexander Smith carpet Mills, as plant manager. When they closed, we hired several other people including Jack Roberts, who had run an offset duplicator there, to run our duplicator and test plates as well as do printing.

POLYCHROME People 4

POLYCHROME People 4　　　as recalled by Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Charles de Rohan (Baron): When Mr. Berkey, the owner of Berkey Photo in Long Island talked to Mr. Halpern about joining with Polychrome, Mr. Halpern suggested he buy Polychrome stock. When he bought 11%, Mr. Halpern became concerned and made a deal with Englehard to buy this 11% back. He put a representative of Englehard on the Board of Directors and paid them several hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. de Rohan was connected to the Englehards. He was mostly bluster. He asked Mr. Halpern for one hundred thousand dollars to buy Polychrome stock. He did not last long.

Dean Hennesy had been the Dean of Chemical Engineering at Columbia. Mr.Halpern did not realize that a Dean’s job was mostly administration and did not require research ability. After a time, Mr. Halpern asked him to resign. Dean Hennesy had a contract with Polychrome that required us to pay his salary for a number of years after leaving.

(Wes Hennesy became our 2nd president....for more detail see the blog article HERE ...KS)

Jeff Jacobson to lead Xerox

Just learned that Jeff Jacobson who rose from HR of Polychrome to lead Kodak Polychrome now leads the Xerox Corporation.        Good luck and congratulations!

HERE is the announcement found in local paper

POLYCHROME People 3

POLYCHROME People 3     As recalled by Bob Gumbinner

Ed Fritz: He had been a Vice-President of Enco, a subsidiary of Kalle Germany who had invented the negative and positive diazos used as the sensitizers for the plates. Mr. Halpern let him make changes in our production processes. These changes resulted in a loss of three-quarters of a million dollars in defective plates. When I was allowed to check up on Ed Fritz, I found that he had been the sales manager and had never been involved with the manufacturing. He was let go by Enco because of excessive drinking.

Leon Katz: He was appointed a Vice President and research director. He had been a Vice President of GAF. He did not set up or direct our research. When I checked with some of the GAF personnel, they were unable to tell me of any contributions for which he was responsible.

(One of his contribution was the suggestion to use amphoteric surfactant in our developer, till then we had not investigated the use of this fourth kind of surfactant after anionic, cationic and nonionic.     The amphoteric surfactant have both anionic and cationic properties and we have since then used this extensively in our developer system......sorry too much technical stuff!        Ken)

POLYCHROME People 2

POLYCHROME People 2

Mr. Halpern would hire people for top level jobs on first impression. He would never let me investigate their background before hiring them. The following are some of the people he hired at was essentially a Vice President level:

Colonel Fullerton: The most important thing to him was repairing the cracks in the courtyard. Fred Hozeny our maintenance manager was too busy to do this. When I left Polychrome 35 years later the cracks were still there and no larger. Colonel Fullerton dated Louise Rehm, Mr. Crabbs secretary.

Louis Esposito: He was hired as the financial officer. After we started to manufacture presensitized plates, he, together with one of our chemists, Mr. Cohen, and Mike Wasilko, Mr. Hozeny’s assistant, set up a competing plant in Mount Vernon, NY, Lith-O-Tech, while working for Polychrome during the day, duplicating our presensitized plate tank line. We sued them. Our attorney Jerry Wanshell put so many causes of action in the complaint that nothing was ever concluded.

Ray Townley: He had been an executive of Ilford. He did not accomplish much but did borrow $40,000 to buy Polychrome stock. He never repaid this loan.

Gregory Halpern:

POLYCHROME People　　　　　　By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Gregory Halpern:

Gregory Halpern studied Chemistry at Columbia University. Later he received honorary Doctorate degrees from Brooklyn Polytechnic and Beaver College, where he was a Trustee. He was from Danzig, Germany. His family owned a small forest in Germany which he sold. He never was involved with the Chemistry research or quality control at Polychrome. Marketing was his forte. He could foresee the future of office copying. He was an excellent salesman. When things were being discussed he was in charge. The only person I knew who did not let Mr. Halpern control the conversation was my brother Jack Gumbinner.

One year we spent considerable time looking for a plant site in Orange County. We met a contractor in Newburgh who after a short conversation was convinced that Mr. Halpern was going to give him a big job and for weeks showed us around the county. I did not see anyplace exceptional. However, the following year we looked at a 400 acre farm in Columbia County which had a well built stone barn, a house that could be used for offices, several ponds and NY State Power, which was much less expensive the power in Yonkers from Consolidated Edison, for fifty thousand dollars. I was disappointed that Mr. Halpern did not buy it. When Mr. Halpern had nothing else to do he would hold meetings many of which I had to attend.