Attempt to enter press equipment field

Attempt to enter press equipment field

Offset Duplicator

Mr. Halpern talked to Sigmund Gestetner about the necessity of planning for the replacement of stencils with offset presses. Mr. Picking, the plant manager of the Totenham plant was opposed to it. He also opposed Gestetner getting the Xerox franchise for England. However Mr. Gestetner approved the project and put up 75% of the money Louis Mestre needed to design and build a prototype. Polychrome put up 25%. When the prototype was finished, Ray Lauzon went to Mr. Mestre’s place in the evenings and operated it and had Louis Mestre make whatever modifications were necessary. Polychrome was short of　cash at that time and Mr. Halpern wanted his investment back. Mr. Gestetner bought Polychrome’s share. He offered Mr. Halpern 11%. Mr. Halpern declined this offer. So Polychrome was not involved in the sales of the Duplicator. Webendorfer licensed, made and sold this press under their brand in addition to Gestetner.

Polychrome lunches

Those who frequented Yonkers head quarter will certainly recognize some of the names of the restaurant Mr. Gumbinner mentions here.        One Italian restaurant he does not mention but vivid in my memory is Amalfi on South Broadway where Mr. Halpern first approached two DIC representatives  about their purchase of Polychrome stock.    (He of course did not intend to sell all the shares at that time but it turned out DIC purchasing entire Polychrome stock eventually.)

Polychrome lunches

Food being an important part of our lives, I will include in this Memoir what I consider interesting eating experiences. The first few years we ate in the laboratory. We sometimes made sandwiches. One day, Arnold Rose, an important dealer from Chicago, who had accounts such as Sears visited us. We asked him what he wanted to eat. He said he would like a drink. We had a half full bottle of rye which he finished. He said he was still hungry. Cort Briggs went out and bought another bottle which he drank. He said he had cut down on liquor. He use to drink a case of beer and four bottles of whiskey a day. Eventually, he died of cirrhosis of the liver and his son took over the company.

One of the restaurants we often went to was the French Chef on South Broadway near the intersection with New Main Street. The most famous of their dishes was stuffed clams, which was made with cheese and cream. We once had a visitor from a German photographic film company who ate four dozen of them. Other interesting dishes were clam manicotti, whale and turtle meat, cherries Escofier--a sort of trifle-and mint parfait pie. We went to a Chinese Restaurant on S. Broadway and Louies by Loews theatre on S. Broadway, an Italian restaurant, which had an Italian cheese cake with dried fruit which I liked. If we used my car to go there, our dog Trooper often was lying under the car. So we had to take him back to 10 Baldwin Pl. We also went to Manzi’s on Warburton Ave. There we often had his antipasto. The restaurant was moved to Hastings and Mr. Manzi sold it to Nancy where we often ate until 1990. On Thursdays, if I did not go to lunch with Mr. Halpern, I would go with Ray Lauzon to Central Lunch on Main Street for the boiled beef and horseradish sauce.

Offset plate (part 3)

Offset plate (part 3)

We bought one of the first models of the Xerox machines. This had three parts: a camera, a unit in which the toner and developer were cascaded over the exposed selenium plate and transferred to the copy paper or offset plate, and a fuser. We had to modify our paper plate to permit proper fusing. When Xerox produce the later models of electrostatic copiers without a camera and fuser, with the assistance of Ken Shimazu, we made a paper offset plate which could be used for this purpose. It required formulating the fountain solution with ferricyanide. We built a small building attached to the wall of the stencil coaters at the Alexander-Ashburton corner to install the coater.