Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 23 Polychrome Clark

Mr. Halpern met Henry Levy and Gene Wilkerson who worked for the Dupont silver halide photograph division.  They had left Dupont but kept the process manuals. Mr. Halpern hired them to start to make graphic arts photographic films.  We bought a building in Clark, New Jersey from a chemical company.  It had several labs with hoods. Next to it was L’oreal. In order to install the spiral coater which they said was needed we had toad a three story annex.  Mr. Halpern thought we would be able to install some of the aluminum plate lines; but when made the plans for the silver halide films there was not enough room. We did install the solution making equipment in one corner. I believe we acquired a small company that made solutions for the graphic arts.  After we started to coat the film, the Hunt brothers of Texas tried to corner the market for silver and the price of silver went from 5.00 dollars an ounce to 50.00.  

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 22 Berwick personnel

A supervisor of the plant told me about a bar in Berwick where I could get Poached salmon .  By poached he meant caught on the property of an estate.  Usually we would take the train to Edinburgh from London to get there.  Several times we hired a private plane. As the pilot started to land he pulled up suddenly.  Somebody had erected a fence.  The only hotel in Berwick was a musty old one.  Mr. Halpern, when he visited Berwick either stayed in a motel several miles or in Edinburgh.  Our Yonkers employee,  who was a lead stencil coater resigned saying he had inherited a bar in Peebles, Scotland from his uncle.  About three years later he returned.  Once when Mr. Halpern was in Edinburgh instead of taking the shortest way from Berwick along the coast, I took the road along the Tweed.  It was an attractive drive.  At a point I made a right turn to drive north to Edinburgh through Peebles.  When I reached Peebles I stopped at a gas station and said I am from Polychrome one of our employees inherited a bar.  A man in the station immediately said you mean Archie Anderson.  When I said yes.  He told me it wasn’t a bar it was fish and chips restaurant and now it sold old bottles and he told me where it was.  I stopped there briefly and went on to Edinburgh.  

Additional memo from Mr. Gumbinner 21 Polychrome Berwick

At that time the European common market did not exist.  It was decided to erect a plant in England to make the presensitized plates.  Tom Heckles  (who may have come from Ilford) was the manager of our England office.  He rented the lower floor of a building in Watford, a northern  suburb of London.  Watford is served by both the Underground and regular trains from Euston station.  We sent rolls of the paper plates and Polychrome Gmbh sent the aluminum plates.  Heckles sheeted the rolls and made the various solutions.  Mr, Halpern decided to open a lithographic plate making facility under the auspices of the Osterode plant.  Tom Heckles was asked to find a place to make the presensitized plates.  He choose Berwick.  A city on the south side of the Tweed River.  Across the river was Scotland.  We acquired a site and installed a 30 inch wide line.  I went there a number of times.