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.