Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 15 Fuji Photo Film

Using  their agent, Mitsui, Fuji Photofilm licensed the zirconium  patent and sent a crew to copy our plate line.  Among them was a chemist, Yonezawa.  My wife had the crew to our house in Tarrytown for dinner. We started to receive complaints that the image came off the plate in spots (walk off).  Mr .Halpern  knew a Mr. Moran who referred a chemist, Simon Chu, to him. He was hired.  He found that if a benzophenone was coated over the diazo it became water insolvent without changing the hardening by ultra-violet light. This solved the walk-off problem.  Later we found that if we used the benzophenone  to precipitate the formaldehyde condensed diazo we were making it could be used to make a plate which did not need to be lacquered to make many printed copies.  

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 14 3M

  One of our users in Ohio, our dealer in Texas, and our Chicago office were sued by 3M for infringing their Jewitt and Case patent.  We then set up Polychrome offices to sell direct to the printer in many cities.  3M won the Texas and later the Chicago case.  The judge had 3M write the findings but when they put in silicate and others, he throw out the others.  We had put the Polychrome lab on finding a substitute for silicate.  We tried a number of organic compounds without success.  We had hired a chemist (Cohen) and Ibert  Mellan, who had written several books about solvents.  He and I found that potassium zirconium fluoride could be used instead of silicate. And started to make plates using this.  We patented this not only in the US and Japan but other countries. 

3 M sued our Chicago office  for patent infringement.  They claimed that the interlayer was actually silicate.  The Chicago judge approved Professor Linford as the master.  We made and 3M made plates using very small amounts of sodium silicate and using potassium zirconium fluoride. The zirconium treated plates performed better. Professor Linford never informed us of his findings.  Before He could the United States found 3M guilty of being a monopoly. Later we appointed Professor Linford as the Polychrome director of research.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 13 smooth plates

 In order to make so called smooth plates we installed a caustic etch tank rinse and de smut and rinse tank over the graining section.  At some point Brushes were added to brush the bottom side of the plates.  The aluminum from either the brush or chemically etch section was passed around a copper clad roller to make electrical contact, we later put carbon brush contractors on the aluminum.  Since aluminum does not plate we were able to place aluminum bars above and below the aluminum sheet from the roll.    This was followed by the interlayer solution and then the light sensitive diazo coating. 

Presidents listing

There were eight presidents who served Polychrome during the 54 years of activity.     .    Here is the listing of the blog pages describing them.

Mr. Gregory Halpern    There are numerous references about the founder in this blog, HERE is one.
Mr. Wesley Hennessey  HERE
Mr. Enrique Levy         HERE
Mr. Joseph Piot           HERE
Mr. Donald Wheeler      HERE
Mr. Mel Ettinger          HERE
Mr. Thomas Bittner     HERE
Mr. Robert Hallman     HERE

Mr. Halpern

Mr. Gregory Halpern was born in Gdansk, Poland and immigrated to US before the WW 2.       His major source of education was, like his very prominent contemporary Dr. Edwin Land of Polaroid, the New York Public Library.         While Dr. Land was an inventor Mr. Halpern was a marketeer.        I know his first venture was to sell inks for stencil process which he started with $500 borrowed from his wife Freda who was working for a telephone company at that time.  (perhaps $50,000 worth at today's value?).

Although the Polychrome History 1935-1988 HERE (one of the most read post of this blog) does not mention it, the company grew through timely acquisitions such as Chromatone (offset ink manufacture ) and Speidel (diazo paper coating) and others.         As Mr. Bob Gumbinner's memoir points out, Mr. Halpern often seemed to have acted on his hunch and intuition rather than thorough business analysis popular in business schools nowadays.       

He has often overridden objections from his lieutenants to make his business decisions which  caused considerable pain in business but as the history shows his decision turned out to be important for the company's success.       (Although I was not there, formation of German company was mostly out of his vision and poured million of dollars as well as manpower to make it successful.     Film venture is another example.     Hardly anyone was in agreement in getting into the business.       He railroaded through objections as well as pouring millions into the venture.        I am quite sure that the film business was a very important part of later joint venture with Kodak.         If there were no film part of business which brought immediate savings to the joint venture, Polychrome may have seen the same fate as once mighty 3M who quietly sold its plate business to the joint venture later on.)

Although Mr. Halpern lost control of Polychrome he may have a satisfaction of knowing that  Kodak came out of bankruptcy focusing on the business around the graphic arts business Polychrome brought into the joint venture.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 12 Anodized plate

I brought some chemically etched sheets to a company in Mount Vernon that did anodizing.  After they were anodized we put them through the silicate and coated them with the diazo.  They produced many more copies than the plates that were not anodized.  Therefore when Century Engineering built the next six brush line to process rolls of aluminum  after the brushing section we installed two deep tanks which had lead pipe lining connected to an anodizer cabinet.  There were 4 foot rubber covered rolls in each tank and a copper clad roll to complete the circuit.  While this worked well, there was considerable leakage of the sulfuric acid solution so we could only use the bottom half of the tanks.  About a year later we had Century Engineering build a third line. 

At the annual Polychrome lunch 10/30/2017

As in past years, Manny Roth of Chicago has organized another Polychrome lunch this year.

Here is the group photos of young looking Polychromers.

Thanks Manny 

From left, Manny Roth, Joe Piel, John Raglione, Jim Fidanza, Fred Marocchi Dominick Cotrano and John Williams.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 11 Polychrome stock and the first graining machine

Before this Mr.  Mr. Halpern sold me and my wife Kay  some shares of Polychrome stock for three dollars a share.  We needed more space.  To raise money we made a public offering of twenty five percent of the Polychrome stock. It was sold by a brokerage firm in Ohio.  I believe it was Hayden-Stone.  The price was either 7 or 9 dollars a share.  We hired Joe Roth who had designed a building around the corner to be the architect for a new building on the lot.  Mr, Halpern through one of his wife brothers who made purses connected him with Century Engineering which was owned by Ed Harris and made brushing machines to polish the back of the mirrors used in the purses.  .  He built first a one brush machine to experiment with.  He then built a six brush machine in which an aluminum plate was carried by a belt under the brushes.  After which rollers carried the plate through a series of tanks and the solution and rinses were sprayed on. Then the plate went through a squeeze roll coater and infra-red bulb drier.  Unfortunetly we could not process the 4 and 6 inch thick plates.  Even with hold down rollers the ends would curl up’

Polychrome vs 3M

When I joined Polychrome in 1965, Polychrome was involved in a bitter lawsuit perhaps for survival with mighty 3M.          As I understood then 3M sued a Polychrome plate user and a dealer claiming Polychrome infringed in their technology； the interelayer treatment called silicating.     Apparently Polychrome used the silicate technology in early production days but soon changed to use Zirconium interlayer but felt continued pressure from 3M and later filed civil suit for anti-trust law violation. The following is an extract from the interesting file  1966 Polychrome vs 3M

1955 3M received patent on silicate treatment
1958 3M sue a Polychrome's customer and a dealer claiming Polychrome infringed their patent,
1960 Polychrome patent on Zriconium compound issued.
1961 Indictment against 3M regarding antitrust action
1962 Polychrome and 3M agree to end law suit and Polychrome receives license on silicate
1966 Jan, a sentence was imposed on 3M (see above 1961 indictment), 3M claimed no contest
1966 Apr. Polychrome file civil suit
1966 Apr. (2 days later) Government start civil action against 3M for Sherman Act (antitrust) violation
1966 Oct. Judge denies move by 3M to move the court venue from NY to Chicago

In 1966 as the suit continued, Polychrome needed to show that the Zirconium technology is not infringing on 3M patent and a court supervised experiment was conducted in Polychrome lab with the presence of 3M chemists and a court appointed referee Dr. Henry Linford of Columbia University.

The suit was abruptly terminated when both party agreed on a settlement.       The details are not known but it was rumored that the Polychrome received $1m from 3M and paid our lawyers more than $1m!

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 10 Aluminum based offset plate

One day I was called into Mr. Halpern’s office to meet the owner of Alum-lith.   He had been making direct image aluminum plates and now was making presensitized aluminum printing plates.  He told us he had found out how 3M was making theirs and for a royalty he would explain the process to us.  He also wanted a small royalty if we used the light sensitive diazo on our paper products para diazodiphenylame  and  formaldehyde. which was supplied by a company in Chicago . Later Gene Golda worked out the method of condensing the para formaldehyde with the diazo . I  designed a plant to make this which was erected at Cellomer.  I and Fred Hozeny, who was the maintenance superintendent and had a license to operate a boiler went to the Alum-o-lith plant.  It was in a suburb of Los Angeles.  I believe Alhambra. We took notes and duplicated the tanks and racks. To make room.  We leased the basement of a vacant school building on Prospect Street.  We  moved the stencil finishing operations there.  Later they were moved to Saw Mill River road. We built a series of tanks and a squeeze roll coater with infra red bulbs to apply the diazo.  We put the first tank line in the space where the stencil finishing operation had been. 

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 9 Paper offset master

 Polychrome hired Robert Techno and his assistant.  They had worked for Remington Rand which had made stencils and direct image paper offset plates.  We tried the stencil coating but it was not as good as we were making.  Teichner made a direct image offset plate using starch carbonate .  This had two coatings.  The first was a urea-formaldehyde  coating which was cured for a day before applying the starch carbonate coating.  Pot-Devin built the two coaters with a direct gas fired tunnel.  To have enough gas we built a small building for the gas reducers.  Half of this building was used as a lab.  Later it was used to make the photo-sensitive coatings.  One of the main usages of this plate was to update telephone directories. 

Polychrome Directory 1970

Thanks to Doug Chu, Simon's son, I now have the Polychrome Directory 1970.        I would be happy to send you any information relating to the personnel then on this directory; please write to me I will respond asap.         In view of the privacy issue I will not post the entire list although it is already 47 years old! as I know a few who still live in the same address.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 8 Stencil Construction

While Speed-O-Print and Gestetner  were  by far our biggest customers others were Rochester Stencils, Canadian Polychrome stencils and several New York City dealers.  While a large percentage of the stencils we coated were blue we also coated green, white and yellow stencils.  We occasionally coated black cushion sheets which were mounted between the stencil and backing sheet.  To completely prevent type filling we would for the premium stencils mount a sheet of pliofilm, rubber hydrochloride made by Goodyear, on top of the stencil.  It was attached with removable glue dots so correction fluid could be applied if an error was made.  We later glued the pliofilm to a folded tab. It could be used for several stencils.  Louis Mestre made a machine to make the tabs.  He had also made a machine to assemble the stencil and backing sheet.  A roll of backing sheet paper and a roll of the stencil tissue were mounted on the machine. A keyhole was punched in the backing sheet and a line of glue was applied.  After the he stencil and backing sheet were cut off, the direction was changed at a right angle and then fed through two multigraphs to print the heading and scale, and then a unit that punched the mounting holes on the backing sheet.  The ink for printing the scale was purchased from IPI.  But I found that if we used paralac it worked as well. The pliofilm machine was installed on the second floor of an old school building on Prospect street. It was operated by Ray Lauzon.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 7 Gestetner

Gestetner which made a two drum stencil duplicator in the Tottenham section of London had made a number of years ago an agreement with A B Dick not to compete in the American market.  This agreement was now ended and Gestetner made an arrangement with Polychrome for Polychrome to furnish the stencils for the Americas.  Polychrome had a dealer in Chicago,  Arnold Rose, who sold a large number of die impressed stencils when he visited us in Yonkers we offered to take him to lunch.  He asked for a drink.  We had a half bottle of Scotch.  He finished it and said he was still hungry.  We sent out to buy another which he finished.  He said he had cut down on drinking. He had been drinking  two bottles of whiskey and a case of beer a day.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 6 Stencil improvements and Speed-o-Print

Our tests showed excessive type filling.  I made a solution that was coated on one side by a coating unit installed at the back end of the coating tunnels which consisted only of nitrocellulose and a plasticizer.  As this coating had a lot of glare I had diatomaceous earth solution put in the middle of the drying tunnel which solved the problem.  For the lower price Polychrome label stencils this was added to the back coating solution.  Later when we made the stencils for the Gestetner duplicator we added an anti-static coating in the middle of the tunnel.  Mr. Halpern made an arrangement with Speed-O-Print that made a hand operated stencil duplicator and was located in a former Bell and Howell building on Larchmont Street, Chicago to take over their stencil coating and mounting facilities.  Speed-O-Print sales manager was Gibby Grant.  We moved their finishing equipment to Yonkers.  They had an 18 inch multigraph to print the heading and scale on the stencils.  The man who ran this press was brought to Yonkers.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 5 Union

Polychrome hired a paper cutter.  He was a recruiter for the paper makers union who got the other employees to join.  When the officers of the union were indicted for using the unions money for themselves, they fled to an African country.  The employees then joined a teamster local that was not involved with truck drivers.  I believe it may have been the same local that the Cellofilm  employees belonged to.  Bernie Gold and I visited the building the local owned in Fort Lee.  We offered to take them out to dinner.  We went to a nearby Italian restaurant. I went in and asked for a table.      The maître d’ said there would be a 45 minute wait .  When the men from the union entered, he asked whether they were with me.  When I said yes, he said I will have a table for you in five minutes.  We engaged an experienced labor lawyer to help us negotiate with the union.  Another year when we settled on a ten cent raise for the year and another ten cents for the following year, the man who was assigned by the teamster union to negotiate with Polychrome after four months came to us shaking.  He said we must pay something to the welfare fund or they will kill me. We agreed to pay a nickel an employee that year and a nickel next. 

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 4 Stencil sales

Most of the stencils were for the army.  The  inspectors  were  more interested in how the shipping cartons were marked than to test the stencil to determine whether they met the government standards.  Polychrome had an agent , Tom Wallace in Washington, D.C. who helped us get  the government business.  When I went to visit him,  he took me to the Bureau of engraving where the currency was printed and the Smithsonian.  The first building Polychrome erected was a small one to be the maintenance shop.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 3 Stencil coating

The stencil coating solution was made by Fred Generlette in the first shed.  He also ran the roller mill in the brick building that was used to grind pigments and make duplicating ink.  Originally we bought nitrocellulose used motion picture film from Cellofilm.  We kept the film rolls in a pit in the yard.  Once it went on fire.  We then bought the nitrocellulose dissolved in ethyl acetate.  When the movies went to safety film.  Cellofilm bought solvent grade nitrocellulose from Hercules and Dupont.  Both Hercules and later Dupont stopped producing nitrocellulose.  Stan Eysman made an arrangement with a French company to be the sole importer of solvent grade nitrocellulose.  Stan Eysman lived in Scotch Plains, NJ.  His wife’s uncle was Julius Boros, one of the top professional tennis players.

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 2 Building at the corner of Alexander and Ashburton

Mr. Halpern bought a lot and building at the corner of Ashburton Avenue and Alexander streets  from an oil company.  The main building was a story and a half.  In the top half there was an office for Mr. Halpern , one for the sales department  Elmer Crabbs was the sales manager.one for the purchasing agent who was Kay Moutal, who I married, and a laboratory.  There was a brick building and three sheds.  In charge of the coating and solution making was Fred Pollack., who had made stencils in Austria. His brother in law was Ernest Brunner who supplied Polychrome with the backing sheet on which the stencil was mounted.  When I arrived they stared to make the stencils from a roll of tissue. Before that Polychrome used Yoshino tissue from Japanese mulberry trees, which was only available as sheets.  The Dexter paper company in Windsor Locks, Conn. Made a tissue from long fiber hemp that was suitable for stencils.  They used an uphill Fourdrinier  to do this.  Their main business was cigarette paper. 

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner (received on Dec. 15, 2016) 1 Mr. Gumbinner joins Polychrome

This is what I remember about Polychrome.. I may make additions or corrections in the future.

  After a few weeks an employment agency sent me to Polychrome Corporation that was located at the corner of Alexandra and Ashburton.  I was interviewed by Gregory Halpern and hired.  At that time they were coating tissue to be used as a duplicating (mimeograph) stencil.  The lot and building were bought from an oil company. There was a story and half main building.  A brick building which we designated as the ink house and a row of sheds.  Mr. Halpern had started Polychrome in lower Manhattan. First to rework excess printing ink.  He with Jimmy Marr, who coated duplicating stencils in Connecticut and Louis Mestre, a Cuban who had invented the night deposit box for banks made a mimeograph duplicator called the style.  When I arrived at Polychrome this had been discontinued .  

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 5

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 5 .      By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

　

Mr. Halpern met with Mr. Kawamura the president of Dainippon. Dainippon agreed to put ten million dollars of additional capital into the Polychrome operation. They did not expect Mr. Halpern to tender his stock. However he did so and resigned as CEO in 1980. Before resigning he forced Bernard Gold out of the company. We had a meeting at Mr. Halpern’s house to decide who should be the president of Polychrome.  He selected Henry Levy to be the president of Polychrome        Later Dainippon Ink and Chemicals made Joe Piot a friend of Mr. Kawamura the president of Polychrome.

After Mr. Halpern tendered his stock to Dainippon, the Polychrome board declared a reverse split of one share of stock for each share of Polychrome common stock to obtain 100% of the Polychrome shares.

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 4

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 4 .    By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

In 1979, Rhodia  appointed Tony Perone as a director of Polychrome. Mr. Perone wanted Mr. Halpern to resign. They bought the Polychrome stock that the Englehard group owned. Then they made a tender offer to buy at $18 a share to buy a majority of the Polychrome stock. Mr. Halpern had had an understanding with Mr. Koyashi to merge Polychrome with Fuji Film. Unfortunately, Mr. Kobyashi had died by this time and Mr. Onishi was the president of Fuji. Mr. Onishi had been in charge of the Fuji United States operations. Although Jim Graves and Bernard Gold had cultivated Mr. Onishi, Mr. Halpern had ignored him. Mr. Halpern then turned to Dainippon Ink and Chemicals. They entered in a bidding war with Rhone Poulenc for the Polychrome stock. They finally offered $27 a share and bought the Rhodia shares and made a tender offer for the rest. During this period Mr. Picard supported Mr. Halpern rather than the Rhodia offer. Mr. Piani was neutral.

Joe Bonime collection at the BYU

Mr. and Mrs Halpern had a very nice Steinway grand piano in their Tarrytown, NY living room and they said it used to belong to their friend Mischa (Elman! the famous violinist). Recently, after seeing this blog, Dr. Rika Asai of Utah State University Music Department contacted me regarding the Josef Bonime Collection of Radio Music at Brigham Young University. It turns out Mrs. Halpern was a younger sister of Mr. Josef Bonime who spent about 10 years with Mischa Elman as his piano accompanist for Elman’s concert tour before he joined a prominent advertising agency McCann-Erickson where he composed, directed, played, and organized radio programs including "Edison Hour,” “Let's Dance" and many others. The radio music collection was donated to BYU by Polychrome where he joined after his retirement as the special assistant to the president. Apparently, Dr. Delos Bown who once taught at BYU was the bridge between Polychrome and the college. According to Dr. Asai's research the collection was almost forgotten and some of the documents were misplaced or disappeared. As the radio era progressed, early programs sponsored by only one single sponsor was gradually replaced by multi-sponsor or spot commercial format and then the radio program itself was taken over by the progress of television. Dr. Asai's 500+ page dissertation points out the  back stage activities of now almost forgotten era when Josef used segments of music composed for various "mood" of the scene and used effectively for the program.      

Her research appears to me almost an archaeological dig in a forgotten music field. Her findings brought out the lifework of this radio program pioneer in an almost fossilized record in this BYU collection.

I am happy to learn Polychrome was instrumental in safekeeping / time capsuling the record this way and also happy Dr. Asai was able to bring a new life into the historical background of early radio music. Thank you Dr. Asai as well as Erica B. who gave me her family background. (Erica's grandfather was a brother of Josef and another Polychrome employee Leopold "Lee" was Josef’s son.)

(I would be happy to forward you a copy of her dissertation upon request if you are interested in the subject further.     The blogger did not allow me to upload PDF file directly)

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 3

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 3 .    By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Hanovia had a plant in Newark that made ultraviolet lamps that were used in plate making equipment. Samuel Reed and Orville Beal, representing Englehard were elected directors of Polychrome. Polychrome also paid $315,658 to Engelhard for their services in conjunction with this purchase and later purchase of Polychrome’s stock by Rhodia.

At some point, Ilford lost interest in the offset plate business and sold their forty percent of Polychrome GMBH to Polychrome. Because of the expense of establishing the photographic film facility in Clark, Polychrome required operating capital. Therefore in July, 1974, Polychrome sold 630,000 shares of common stock to Rhodia. In 1975, Mr. Halpern owned about 15% of Polychrome stock, Rhodia 26% and Englehard interests 11.5%. Richard Piani and Raymond Picard were elected Directors of Polychrome.

Rhodia was a wholly owned subsidiary of Rhone Poulenc, the leading manufacturer of chemicals in France. Mr. Picard, chairman of Rhodia, was in charge of the Rhodia operations in the United States. Richard Piani was the managing director of La Cellophane S.A., also a wholly owned subsidiary of Rhone Poulenc. La Cellophane had a plant in Arques La Bataille where they manufactured diazo papers similar to the Speidel operation. They also had a plant in Avranche that made bi and tri metallic printing plates. When I visited these plants, I was shown the operations by Mr. Weber, the research director. La Cellophane bought and sold Polychrome printing products.

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 2

Numbers of corporations interested in aquiring Polyhrome 2    By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

In 1973, Ben Berkey, the owner of Berkey Photo, who had a plant in northern Queens, met Mr. Halpern and discussed merging Polychrome and Berkey. Mr. Halpern suggested that he start by buying Polychrome stock. When Mr. Berkey did so and acquired about 250,000 shares of Polychrome stock, Mr. Halpern became concerned that he might be able to get a majority of Polychrome stock. At that time Mr. Halpern owned about 20% of the Polychrome stock. Mr. Halpern urged the employees to buy Polychrome stock. Although a number of us pledged that we would, it was not enough to guarantee control. Then Mr. Halpern approached Englehard Hanovia and made an arrangement for Englehard to buy the Polychrome stock from Berkey. 

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 1

Numbers of companies interested in acquiring Polychrome 1     By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

A number of companies tried to acquire Polychrome. Mr. Halpern was flattered by this and let them think he was open to selling Polychrome. I visited a number of such companies. One was Fairchild Semi- conductor who showed us their plant on Long island where they were making the silicon crystals for IC chips by the boat process. Another was Itek who brought us to their plant in Lexington, MA, and entertained us.

Another was a company hat coated paper and had a plant in Charlotte, NC and also one in Wales, England. I took a train from London to visit this plant near Chester and saw the Roman walls that were still standing. Then I took the train to Glasgow to a station where I changed to a one car railroad train that went over the hills to Berwick.

Union relationship

Union relationship                   By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Even though our starting wage scale was usually ten per cent above the federal minimum, we had a good relationship with the Teamsters Union. We may have had one strike for a few days. Although we spent considerable time with our employees who represented the union, the real negotiations were carried out by Marshall Miller, our labor consultant, and the secretary of the local, who was not an employee. One year we gave the employees a 25 cent per hour raise and nothing to the union welfare. A few months later the secretary came to us very shaken. He told us the people who ran the welfare threatened to kill him. We then offered 10 cents to the welfare that year and 10 cents the next. Bernard Gold and I visited the locals head-quarters in Fort Lee NJ several times. Once we invited the bosses to dinner. We went to a well known Italian restaurant. When I asked for a table for five, I was told there would be an hour wait. When the union members came in, the maitre de said “give me three minutes and I will have a table for you”.

Jay's photo collection

Jay Patel brought several photos from his collection.          They are both 80's and 90's pictures at the trade shows and get together.        My failing brain does not bring up all the names in the pictures.     Please help me if you can identify them.         Judging from the darkness of hair, the first four photos are probably from the 80's and was probably at the time we were celebrating the Intertech Award for the OPC-B . Laser Scan.          The last two are probably from the 90's when we introduced Quantum 830 laser thermal plate.

Back from left, me, Nick Merchant, Wei Zhu, Mario Rufino, Bob Hallman, Jay Patel

front from left Amando Avancena, Ed Kob, Tore Harms, Jay Hong

from left Jiwan Gandhi, Gordon Jenkins, Jay Patel, Prakash Seth, Ralph Gigi

Jerry Kesselman and Evelyn Patel

Ralph Gigi, AJ Shah, Prakash Seth

Jay and me at a trade show

Jay and MyT Nguyen

These two photo must have been from the mid to late 90's when My developed preheat thermal plate.

mini-mini reunion

Here is the happy mini reunion at the Briar's where we had two reunions in the past.     Jay Patel was in town and the lunch meeting was quickly organized.       Jay's wife Evelyn still works for Sun Chemical in Carlstadt but was in a medical leave until this week and Jay was helping her move around.      He still maintains house in Colorado and reports his two kids have flown out of his house both happily married.          Jenchi Huang reported that his wife is retiring this week and they have been traveling together various parts of the world, South America Cruise , Germany through Rhine River Cruise, etc.      No wonder his knee is hurting and had to leave early for his physical therapy.
Simon looks as good as ever, still enjoys babysitting chores for his youngest son Chris.         I have been warning him that the babysitting job will go away soon as the baby grows up to say around 12 just in case of my wife who is no longer needed by our grandchildren nearby who have grown up to 16 and 12!        So enjoy while he can!        
Happy to see old friends!

from left

Jay Patel, Jenchi Huang, Simon Chu, Ken Shimazu

Financial 1

Financial 1 .         By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

On March 7, 1961, Mr. Halpern sold 30% (150,000 shares) of the Polychrome stock to the public. The IPO was done by Hayden and Stone, a brokerage house in Ohio. The stock was sold at seven dollars a share. Some of the stock was bought by Laird & Co. and Alfred DuPont Dent, one of the principals was elected to the board of Polychrome. The following year, Mr. McNeil of Hayden was elected to the board. Before the public sale, Mr. Halpern had sold at the book value a few share of stock to Bernard Gold, who was Polychrome’s CFO, myself and Kay. He also got back from Myron Doyno, one of Polychrome’s earliest employees the ten per cent of the Polychrome stock he had been given in lieu of salary. Myron for many years represented Polychrome in Canada. In 1963, Polychrome common stock was listed on the American Stock exchange. Over the years, since cash was tight, stock dividends were given. In 1968, a public sale was made of 200,000 shares of Polychrome common stock.

Financial 2

Financial 2                    By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

When we designed the 137 Alexander St. building in 1968, we included a room for a computer. Our first computer was a magnetic drum RAM. Liquid nitrogen was needed to keep the CPU cool. Input was done by punched cards. There was a bank of magnetic tapes to store data and to change the program hard wired boards had to be changed. A few years later we went to an IBM business computer. In 1972, Polychrome bought the 2 Ashburton Ave. property from Mr. Halpern for $910,000.

(KS note      I remember the first electronic calculator purchased at $3000 in late 60' was the opening of the computer era.         When Tore Harms was in the Yonkers production he promoted the use of computer in production.        This early effort met difficulty due to the failing of the computer company he was dealing with (I believe it was called Prime Computer).       He may not have support of the data processing department using Univac and then IBM computer for the financial data processing.)

Site searches 2

Site searches 2 .          By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

However, we were serious about moving the plate manufacturing operations to Philadelphia. We put an option on a building a few blocks from the North Philadelphia airport. As I was to be in charge of this plant, I spent a number of days looking at houses. Jacobs Engineering was hired to design the line to make the Fotomer presensitized grained anodized plates. We were buying a large amount of an imidazoldine for the solution we sold to develop the plates after imaging. Mr. Halpern insisted that we provide space in this Philadelphia plant for this and also to make the diazo sensitizers over my objections. The site where the building was located, although zoned industrial was not zoned for chemical manufacture. The Philadelphia officials whom we met assured us that there would be no problem getting a variance. These included the gentleman who represented the district where the plant was located. A number of the residents, when they heard the word “chemical” objected. We invited a group to visit our plant in Yonkers. There was an election shortly after that and the incumbent, who supported us, lost. Mr. Halpern would not back down and we cancelled the purchase option which had a clause that we would get the zoning change.

Site searches 1

Site searches 1 .     By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

A number of times Mr. Halpern looked for a site to relocate the presensitized plate production. One year, he and I spent many days traveling over much of Orange County, NY. We met a builder at a site in Newburgh who showed us around the county. We later saw a 200-acre farm with a well built stone barn and house on 200 acres in Columbia County, NY which I said we should buy. We drove to Hazelton, Penn. There the industrial development people “CANDO” made a very good presentation. Mr. Halpern was impressed. We sent our plant manager, Leo Golusinski, to check it out. On returning he said “Don’t you dare go there. The workers are hard cold miners and bitter.” John Brunner who had run the sheeter and the finishing of paper plates came from that are and agreed with Leo. We flew to Raleigh NC and were taken by a NC state plane to Asheville. We saw an excellent site by the Swananoa River. The Governor’s assistant took us to lunch on the terrace of the Grove Park Inn. He also showed us several sites near Durham, NC. Realizing we were Jewish, he said he was not going to take us to the Winston Salem area since our staff might not be happy there. We sent Leo Golusinski to Asheville. On his return, he told us there should not be any problems with workers. There had been a strike by the police but it was more of a personal matter. When we lived in Asheville, very few people knew about it. I did not believe Mr. Halpern was serious about moving. It may have been a ploy for union negotiations. Although not a site visit, after Leo Golusionski’s premature death, the plant manager we hired owned a Mohawk plane. He flew us to Delaware to look at a plant where plates were being made by anodizing with silicate. On the way back we had to stop for several hours to avoid a storm.

Other products

Other products         By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

About 1965, Kenichi (Ken) Shimazu was hired. He developed a paper plate with a rose bengal sensitized zinc oxide coating which could be imaged by the Xerox electrostatic process. By using a ferricyanide solution, copes could be run on an offset press. We installed a coater to make these plates in a room attached to the stencil coating section of 2 Ashburton. Kenichi also worked on making films for proofing using the fotomer negative sensitizer and the pyrogallol acetone positive sensitizer with dyes which matched the basic printing ink colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow. A small room was enclosed in the 137 Alexander Street building to apply these to a polyester base.

KS note:  For a long time I was managing the Specialty Product Laboratory, a catch all description of what my group was doing which is everything outside of main products.         Jay Patel joined me in getting most of the things done like the electrostatic master paper and Chrome Guide Color proofing system.       During Rhone Poulanc participation, Jay worked on the OPC-A and after the DIC take over worked on OPC-B which lead to the use in Wall Street Journal resulting in eventual Intertech Awards for the technology.        Jay was also the main force behind the success of CTX in the field.   Later with the help of My Nguyen we produced Quantum 830, the preheat thermal in direct competition agains the then leading Kodak Thermal 830.           Since the focus of the group was non-main line products, our effort could not end just developing products, we by necessity needed to collect market info, do scale up in the plant and even run initial production, field test the products and promote the products at the customer level.          Polychrome was a small company but our group worked almost like a small company within the company and we all had fun doing it as we were able to learn wide variety of tasks necessary for making a laboratory curiosity into a successful products
I was pretty lucky in that the initial non-main products I was involved in eventually became major products for Polychrome.         

Lith Film 2

Lith Film 2　　　　　　By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

In 1976, the spiral coater became operational and the production of graphic arts films was started. Max Van Dam, who had worked for a company in western New Jersey that did photographic coating, was hired as the chief chemist. Henry Levy was having difficulty managing the work force so Stanley Eysmann, who lived in Scotch Plains about six miles from Clark, was put in charge of the operations. Next door to our building was a L’oreal plant. Our employees were permitted to purchase cosmetics from this plant at the same price as the L’oreal employees. I visited the Clark plant about once a month to make sure things were going smoothly and to chair the research meetings.

Lith Film 1

Lith Film 1                By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

In the late 1960s, we imported graphic arts film from our licensee in Japan, Fuji Photo Film, and sold it under the Polychrome label. After a number of years, Fuji asked us to sell film under the Fuji name, Mr. Halpern was reluctant to do this. We looked into acquiring a company which made graphic arts film. We went to Cleveland to visit the Brown film company, which 3M later bought; a company in eastern Long Island; and a plant in Rochester NY, which had been erected by Bell and Howell. I remember driving back from Rochester along route 17 in a heavy rain storm.

In 1973, we contacted Henry Levy and Gene Wilkerson who had a photographic film consulting business. They assured Mr. Halpern that they knew what was required to make graphic arts film. We hired Henry Levy to head up this operation. Gene Wilkerson preferred to remain as a consultant. As a site for manufacturing the graphic arts film we found a plant on Terminal Ave. in Clark N. J. on ten acres which had been built by the Celanese Co. This building had a number of well designed and furnished laboratories. To coat the film, Henry Levy recommended a spiral coater. We erected a three story annex along one end of the building for this purpose and ordered one from a company that had built these units. After it was operational, we hired one of the engineers who had worked on the design, Kurt Hausman. At the opposite end of the building a room was enclosed for mixing the various solutions used to process film and plates and other graphic art chemicals. Several tanks were installed outside the building for raw materials. We hired Bill Towns who had a small chemical mixing plant to run this operation. Originally, Mr. Halpern had expected to put a line for making presensitized plates in this building; but as the production of films advanced, all available space was taken. In laying out the building, it was necessary to provide light locks between sections to avoid exposing the film and the coating area had to be extremely clean and temperature and humidity controlled. A wall was erected between the drive motors and auxiliary equipment and the coaters and drying tunnel.

Luxury water front condo on Ashburton Ave?

Today April 18, 2017, I stopped by the old Polychrome HQ at Ashburton and Alexander.   I was able to drive in to the parking lot in front of the building facing Hudson.       There is a sign posted to show that the Northline Utilities operates here.      As you can see there are many electric power line related materials on the ground.      I found a trailer converted into office building and had chance to chat with a lady working in the office.     She said that the company is renting the space just for a while and she expects the property will be converted to a water front luxury apartment with a great water front view.       I did not see on my way in but she pointed out that there are many new apartment buildings being built along the Ashburton Ave.        Yes the gentrification may finally arrive in Yonkers!

Along the north side of Ashburton Ave. lined by new apartments!

Polychrome England

Polychrome England         By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

As Ilford did not actively pursue the sales of the presensitized plates, we opened a sales office in London. Soon after, we hired Tom Heckels to manage the office. In order to do some manufacturing, we rented space in Watford. Tom Heckels and his wife, Shiela, who came from Aberdeen, Scotland, lived in Watford. I went there a number of times to set up an operation to cut, punch and package paper offset plates. These were coated in Yonkers and the rolls sent to Watford. I also set up facilities to mix and bottle various solutions used in offset printing and printing inks. To get to Watford from London I usually took a train from Eustis station. Once I took the Metropolitan tube subway line.

To better serve the United Kingdom printers, Mr. Halpern decided to construct a plant in England as a subsidiary of Polychrome GMBH to manufacture presensitized plates. Tom Heckels, who had visited the plant in Yonkers several times and was familiar with the operation, was asked to locate a site for the factory. He chose a site in Berwick upon Tweed. This was in northern England on the border with Scotland. The authorities there welcomed us. They were happy to have an industry that would employ people. I worked with Tom Heckels and several people sent from Osterode to design the line. While it copied some of the features of the C-line in Yonkers, we left space to make electrolytic grained plates. Mr. Halpern and I went to the plant for the grand opening. A member of the Royal family was there as well as all of the Berwick officials.

We advertised for a chemist and hired Robert Armstrong, who had lived in Berwick. On one of my trips there he took me to a bar where we had fresh caught poached salmon. They had been poached - i.e., stolen - from the Tyne. When Berwick was closed, Armstrong and several others were relocated to the plant in Columbus, Georgia.

Polychrome GMBH 4

Polychrome GMBH 4               by Mr. Bob Gumbinner

After Kay had brain surgery in [1966], and was diagnosed with an astrocytoma, in order that I could take care of her, the direct responsibility for Polychrome GMBH was assigned to Simon Chu, who was made a vice-president. I did, however, still go to Germany a number of times, particularly when a DRUPA was scheduled. In order to make grained plates a building on a stream close to downtown Osterode which had been a furniture show room was purchased. A graining line was installed and a coater sent from Yonkers. The mechanical parts of the graining line were bought from Deprieux, and the anodizing section from Langbein. Both of these companies were in the Dusseldorf/Cologne area. I went several times to their factories. One time I rented a Mercedes and took a new autobahn between Kassel and Dortmund. There was very little traffic and the road had straight sections. I drove part of the way at over 125 miles per hour. For the B and C lines in Yonkers we bought two shaft revolving unwind stands and heat seal splicers from Deprieux. After Fred Hozeny retired, Mr. Brown took over the maintenance in Yonkers. I had him build an accumulator so there was no stopping of the lines when a new roll of aluminum was spliced to the web After a few years and several additions to the Osterode facility, land in a nearby town, Katzenstein, which had buildings for growing mushrooms, was bought A building was erected and an additional production line installed.

Polychrome GMBH 3

Polychrome GMBH 3           By Mr. Bob Gumbinner    

Mr. Feist and Mr. Aurich, who was the sales manager, were not successful in establishing dealers. Thus, we sent Seth Cross, who spoke German fluently, to help manage the operation and help Mr. Aurich to establish a network of dealers. Mr. Aurich’s son, Gunther Aurich, was employed as a salesman and to train the dealers. We advertised in the United States for an executive who would want to go to Germany to run Polychrome GMBH. Constantjin Van Lynden was selected for this position. Later, Konrad Richter was made the plant manager and Klaus Zimmermann the chief financial officer.

Reunion in Chicago

Here is the announcement from Manny Roth who has been organizing reunion in Chicago for many years and this is the one for this year.        I look forward to receiving photos and comments.
KS

Save the Date

Our annual lunch will be held

Monday, October 30, 2017

at the

HiView Restaurant

425 West St. Charles Rd.

Villa Park, IL

at

11:30 AM

If you are planning on attending please respond no later than October 21st so the restaurant can be notified of the number to expect.

Manny Roth 

mannyroth@hotmail.com

Polyworld listing.

So far in this blog, numbers of Polyworld were uploaded but there are still many missing.        Below the volumes with link are what had been uploaded.      You can view the publication in full by clicking the link.       If any of the readers come across missing (the ones without links) issues, please share it with me so that they can be uploaded.     Ken

Polyworld listing in this blog.


1992 vol.11 no.1
1991 vol.10
1990 vol.9   no.1 no.2
1989 vol.8   no.1 no.2
1988 vol.7   no.1 no.2
1987 vol.6   no.1 no.2
1986 vol.5   no.1 no.2
1985 vol.4   no.1 no.2  vol.5.no1  vol.5 no4 
1984 vol.3   no.1 no.2  vol.3 vol4 no4 winter 84-85
1983 vol.2    vol.2 no.1 spring 84  vol.2 no2 summer 84
1983 vol.1   no.1 no.2
1982 vol.1   no.1 no.2

Polychrome GMBH 2

Polychrome GMBH 2　　By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Mr. Feist was requested to find a place in Germany for Polychrome GMBH to set up a production line for the presensitized plates. He choose a suburb of Osterode in the Harz mountains, Freiheit, because it was only a two hour drive to Berlin and he did not intend to spend more than a few days a week away from Berlin.

We had told him we needed a large supply of water. Since there was reservoir next to Osterode he told us there was plenty of water. We rented space in a building in Freiheit, Ilford, and sent several of their technical staff to help me set up the tank line in this space. What Mr. Feist either didn’t know or didn’t tell us was that the pipes that led from Osterode to Freiheit were very old and filled with deposit so the water flowed at a much less rate than we needed. Therefore, we had to install several large tanks to store water which we kept running at night and over the weekends. Ilford sent several of their technical people to help me to organize the operation and set up the tank line. We hired Mr. Mintel as the plant the plant chemist. He may have been the only German employee who was an anti-nazi.

Article on Jeff Jacobson

Steve Gallo alerted me to an article on recent Barrons on the new Xerox 

and the new CEO, "our" Jeff Jacobson.     Thanks Steve

IN AN INTERVIEW with Barron’s, CEO Jacobson, who previously led the company’s technology-equipment business, isn’t promising miracles. The slimmed-down Xerox is expected to see revenue fall about 5% this year, to $10.2 billion, and earnings decline 3%, to $913 million, or 85 cents a share. Jacobson doesn’t expect revenue growth until 2020, and then only if Xerox can get 50% of sales from “growth” markets, up from just 37% now.          

One attractive segment is networked printer systems, through which Xerox installs and maintains all of the printers in an office, often collecting recurring lease revenue. That leads to more annuity-like purchases of items like toner and paper as well as maintenance, which together kick in 75% of Xerox’s revenue.

It will need more successful products to kick-start growth. Among the 29 slated launches, Xerox is introducing a new A4 multifunction printer, whose trim size and lower price are aimed at small and medium-size companies. It’s also investing in smart packaging that features low-cost printed memory that can authenticate a brand or the condition of the product inside, capabilities appealing to food and pharmaceutical companies.

Credited with producing, but not capitalizing on, the first home computer, Xerox is “still one of the top 20 patent-producing firms in the world,” as Jacobson notes.

Xerox must be relentless in trimming costs. Although it hasn’t specified a job-reduction target for 2017, it eliminated 4,800 positions in 2016. Already, it has beaten its first-year goal of $500 million in cost reductions by $50 million, and has a target of $600 million this year. That should help margins. Xerox’s aim this year for adjusted operating margins is 12.5% to 13.5%, versus 12.5% in 2016.

The company’s plan is to return at least 50% of free cash to investors. After paying its substantial dividend, it should have free cash flow of $145 million to $345 million in 2017. Xerox former Chief Financial Officer Leslie Varon has said that investors should expect Xerox to begin buying back stock by 2018.

Xerox shareholders would be very happy if it can emulate HP Inc.’s stock performance. Those shares have risen 42%, to $17.30, since the split, while its multiple has improved about four turns, to roughly 10 times 2018 earnings. Xerox now trades at a multiple of 8.6 times 2017 earnings.

ValueWorks’ Lemonides says that investors have put a $7 billion stock market valuation on a company that generates $10 billion in revenue and $500 million to $700 million in total free cash flow. “It’s a compelling risk/reward proposition,” he says. Assuming that Xerox can keep its turnaround on track, Lemonides thinks that it can trade at 13 to 16 times earnings in the next two years.

For sure, Xerox has its work cut out for it, with declining sales in the large enterprise printer and copier markets.

But investors are getting cheap shares and a good dividend from a large, profitable tech outfit with an interesting pipeline. Another comfort: Icahn remains Xerox’s biggest holder, with 10% of the stock, and one of his representatives sits on its board. That should keep management focused on investors.

Dr. Henry B. Linford R& D director in early 80's

Dr. Henry Linford came to Polychrome as the third Director of Research following Mr. Ibert Mellan and Dr. Delos Bown.     (Discounting the fact that Simon Chu was ever present as the de facto director of research with various ideas in the development of new products.

He was the one contacted by the court as the expert witness during our court battle against 3M as he was one of the most distinguished electro chemist at Columbia University.       An award with his name on is still being awarded today after he passed away suddenly right after our visit to Japan shortening his tenure as our director to less than a year.

See the following announcement published in 2015 by the Electro Chemical Society.

Henry B. Linford Award

Henry B. Linford was a distinguished professor of chemical engineering at Columbia University and known for his work and research in electroplating and corrosion of metals. With a Society history dating back to 1936, Dr. Linford served as ECS secretary for 10 years and president of The Electrochemical Society from 1961-62.

Through his role as an educator and work in electroplating and corrosion, Dr. Linford became one of the most highly recognized members of ECS. In 1936, Henry B. Linford was awarded the Weston Fellowship of $1,000 from The Electrochemical Society. The Weston Fellowship remains an ECS award as part of the our Summer Fellowships program. Dr. Linford was also the recipient of the Acheson Medal and Prize in 1960.

The Henry B. Linford Award for Distinguished Teaching was established in 1981 for excellence in teaching in subject areas of interest to the Society and continues the cycle of recognition.

Polychrome Directory 1990

Al Wierling kindly offered to respond to your inquiry regarding the phone numbers and addresses of old Polychrome employees found in the 1990 Polychrome directory he found,     Here is his invitation.

From Al Wierling

I am attaching photos of an old Polychrome phone directory circa 1990. It appears to list sales, Yonkers, branch employees and many others by address and phone number by employee name. I am attaching only the first few pages, not the actually listing by employee which may not be wise given today's personal identity concerns. The list does show all branch and manufacturing locations which some of your readers may find interesting. If anyone wants info regarding a friend or co worker, I will be happy to share that with them if they email me at awierlin@bellsouth.net

regards

al wierling

Recent message from Bill Palafox

Bill Palafox who managed Polychrome's hardware division wrote to me updating his recent activities.       Thanks  Bill!


Hi Ken,

As always, thank you for keeping the Polychrome spirit burning!

I and my wife, Mary Lu, have spent recent good times with Mario Rufino and Rosemary Furno at their beautiful log home in the Catskills...most recently, just a couple of weeks ago.  Polychrome stories and fond memories are always on the agenda.  

We always a re-hash of OPC A, B, C, D, etc and PPN 1, 2, 3, etc. etc...Rachwal, Opti-Copy, Direct-to-plate, etc.  Then, we adjourn to the ski slopes at nearby Windham for daytime skiing and "apres" afterwards.

For us, sailboat racing is our retirement passion along with winter x-Country and downhill skiing.  Got to keep the body moving!  See photos 

Again, thank you for the Polychrome blog.

Bill Palafox

photos attached

(Hmmm! Sailing!   Something to think about when I get old enough!     Ken)