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.