Stencil Manufacturing ( part 7)

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 7)

(For those who had witnessed automatic mounting machines on the first floor of headquarter would be interested in the history of this machine, KS)

Mr. Halpern together with Jimmy Marr, who made stencils, had worked with Louis Mestre before World War 2 to build a stencil duplicator which they named “Style”. When I joined Polychrome this was past history. Louis Mestre was born in Cuba and smoked several cigars a day. He was a designer-inventor of office related machinery. He did work for Diebold Safe. He built the night depository for banks. He designed and made two stencil mounting machines. These machines included a station for mounting the backing sheet rolls, a station for mounting the rolls of coated stencils (I believe a third unwind station may have been available). The backing sheet passed over a roll where it were a light mineral oil was applied. A thumbhole was punched in the bottom of the backing sheet and the sheet was perforated to form the stub. A line of glue was applied to the stub and then the stencil was attached and the assembly cut to the correct width. And dropped on conveyor rolls. After a short distance, the assembled stencil was pushed at a right angle and fed through a multigraph with a rubber printing plate which printed the stub and a second one which printed the scale. They then dropped in a stacker, which the operator rolled away and replaced when filled. Louis Mestre also built a machine to attach the pliofilm sheet to the stencil. Ray Lauzon worked at Louis Mestre’s shop for several months getting this machine operational and later it was installed on an upper floor in the school building on Hawthorn Ave. When the stencil finishing operation was moved to Alexander Street, we bought a mounting machine from the Vertex Co. of Montvale New Jersey who had been making carbon paper collating machines. This machine did all the operations in line and had stations for mounting the playful either by gluing on the stub or gluing the pliofilm to a separate parchment tab which was folded over the stencil after the scale had been printed. A register mark was printed with the scale and an electric eye controlled the cut off blade to insure accurate alignment of the scale and heading.

Farewell Dr. Delos Bown

I am very sorry to report Dr. Delos Bown passed away this past March.    Here is the obituary found in the Desert News. March 10, 2016

He was my earliest boss at Polychrome.      He was the roll-up-his-sleeve and show how things should be done kind of leader.        The obituary did not mention the fact that he has served as the distinguished Research Director of Polychrome Corporation.    I am sure that because of his usual modesty he did not tell his accomplishments even within his closest circle.       As I mentioned elsewhere, he may be remembered by some as the creator of the PC-11 desktop processor which he built in his garage in his White Plains house.         

He is greatly missed by all those who worked under and with him throughout the company wherever he worked, R&D, Technical Service, China Partner liaison, etc.

1923 ~ 2016

Delos Edward Bown passed away on March 2, 2016. He was born May 21, 1923 in Provo, Utah to William Bown and Hattie Andersen. He married Margaret Hales on December 27, 1949 in the Salt Lake Temple. They have four children: Stephen, Isabel, David, and Ann and nineteen grandchildren.

During World War II Delos enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He served in England as a navigator-bombardier flying in a B-17. After the war he returned to Provo where he studied chemistry at Brigham Young University. After earning a bachelor's and master's degree at BYU, Delos continued his education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated from MIT with a PhD in organic chemistry. During his professional career Delos worked for Exxon in Texas and later for Polychrome Corporation in New York as a research chemist.

He was an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Delos loved Scouting. As a boy he was a Sea Scout and as an adult he served many years as a Scoutmaster. His hobbies included woodworking, tending his rose garden, fishing, skiing well into his 70's, playing cards and reading. Delos was also an expert handyman; he could fix anything.

Delos was preceded in death by his wife Margaret and his eight brothers and three sisters.

A graveside service will be held at the Provo City Cemetery on Saturday, March 12 at 2:00 p.m. In lieu of flowers please donate to Honor Flight, Inc. a non-profit organization that honors American Veterans by providing transportation to Washington, D.C. to visit their war and service memorials or a charity of your choice .

Published in Deseret News on Mar. 10, 2016

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 6)

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 6)

With increase in stencil sales, there was not enough room in the building at 2 Ashburton Ave. to finish the stencils. The bottom floor of a former school building at the corner of Hawthorn and Prospect was rented and the finishing operations moved there. From there the stencil finishing was moved into the 12,000 sq. ft. building we had erected on the Ashburton lot. In June 1961, this operation was moved to a building on Saw Mill River Road. After we erected a building on Alexander Street diagonally across from 2 Ashburton, the stencil finishing operations were moved there. At the height of the stencil duplicating usage, we had four coating machine, which coated double width rolls of tissue 24 hours a day for five days. These rolls were put on racks and transported to the finishing area where they were sheeted or split and rewound.

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 5)

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 5)

Mr. Halpern obtained two major customers, who manufactured stencil duplicators. The first was Speed-O-Print. Speed-O-Print made a regular size and a small note size hand -operated Stencil Duplicator. Speed-O-Print had been mounting their stencils. Mr. Halpern sold Abe Samuels, the owner of Speed-O-Print, that Polychrome should do this. At the time Speed-O-Print was moving to a building at 1801 W Larchmont, Chicago, IL, which they purchased from Bell and Howell. Polychrome bought the equipment and stock. One

of Speed-O-Print’s employee who printed the scale on the stencil using a 11 by 19 Multilith which was converted to print from the blanket cylinder joined Polychrome.

Abe Samuels was a big time gambler. He had owned 15 percent of the Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Los Vegas. He took us to dinner at Gibys a restaurant in the loop on the Chicago River. He ate little but placed bets. He gave college football players summer jobs.

Mr. Halpern had met Sigmund Gestetner. Gestetner was the largest seller of Stencil Duplicating machines outside of the United States. Gestetner had made an agreement with A B Dick in the early 1930’s whereby Gestetner would not sell in the United States and Dick would not sell in Europe. When this agreement expired, Gestetner arranged to work with Polychrome to supply them with Gestetner labeled stencils for the United States market. They rented space in one of the Alexander Carpet Shop Buildings on Nepperhan Ave. Later Gestetner erected a building on part of the property which the Boyce Thomas Institute sold, when they moved their research to upstate New York in conjunction with Cornell University.

stencil manufacturing 4

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 4)

I (Mr. Gumbinner) invented and patented a stencil with a yellow top coat and a heavier black coat on the underside. These stencils were sold to Weber Addressing and Sten-C-Label who made a small device to mark shipping cartons. They mounted the stencils to a backing sheet, which when the address was typed could be kept in the office and the stencil be sent to the shipping department to mark the packages. This reduced the possibility of shipping errors as well as saving the time of making a Marsh stencil. We used Marsh stencils to mark our shipping cartons. In the 1940s, much of Polychromes production was for the armed forces. An inspector would check the shipments before it was released. They always accepted our test results. When a new inspector came, he would make us remark the cartons. The inspectors weren’t consistent.

We were not patent conscious in the forties, so we did not patent several other of my stencil inventions. Two other products that we produced on the stencil coating machine were a clear stencilizing coating on a heavy tissue for strain gauges. This was for a company in Eddystone, Pennsylvania and a heat sensitive paper which was used in cardiograph machines and similar marking applications. The black tracing was made by a heated sapphire stylus.

stencil manufacturing 3

Stencil Manufacturing ( part 3)

The coated stencils were mounted on a backing sheet. The backing sheet was a piece of Kraft paper that had been lightly coated with mineral oil so it would not absorb the oils from the coated stencils. Originally, we bought this paper from Link in New Jersey. The top of the backing sheet were printed with the name of the company selling the stencils. While we sold stencils with the Polychrome label the majority were sold to accounts that had their own label. Two duplicating machine manufacturers Gestetner and Speed-o-Print became our biggest customers. Holes were punched in the top of the backing sheet to match the clamp on the duplicator to which the typed stencil was fastened. The original Gestetner heading required a complicated die. Later they simplified it. After printing the backing sheet was perforated so that after the stencil was typed the backing sheet below the punched stub could be torn off. The backing sheet was then passed through a Pot Devin gluer and the stencil sheet which had been cut to the proper size was glued on. The assembled stencil was then imprinted with a ruler guides. Some special stencils, which were mounted on an unoiled backing sheet ha a piece of parchment paper inserted between the backing sheet and the stencil. To complete eliminate the typewriter keys from filling with the stencil coating the more expensive stencils were sold with a sheet of pliofilm, a thin chlorinated rubber film made by Goodyear. This was attached to the backing sheet stub with dots of a removable glue. To make corrections the typist would pull the playful down the pliofilm and apply correction fluid to the error and retype. We bought the correction fluid from Starkey. We purchased styli and lettering guides for resale were made by Monks operating as Technigraph. To prevent the stencil oils from wrinkling the pliofilm a parchment sheet was inserted between the stencil and pliofilm. Later the pliofilm was glued on a short piece of paper a tab which was folded over and could be place over the stencil backing sheet assembly. These could be put separately in the package and used several times. The stencils were packaged in quires. That is 24 sheets. Included with the stencils were 8 or 12 carbon coated sheets enclosed in a parchment folder which was sometimes printed. For blue and green stencils the carbon coating was white. For yellow and white stencils black carbon paper was used. These carbon papers made much easier for the typist to see what was being typed.

Our old Yonkers headquarter building on the way out

Ron Muzillo  was at our Yonkers headquarter building site recently and found it is being demolished and writes

The entire 1st floor appears to be demolished- All of the walls havebeen taken out, one big hall!!

I'm not sure about the 2nd floor but the building is in terrible shape, both inside and out.

Its a shame, a beautiful location but there's not much you can do with the building or parking lot which appears to be a parking are for larger type trucks and large dumpsters. Looking at the mfg facilities across the street and thosebuildings are following apart...terrible shape. They need to be torn down and start all over.

Its heartbreaking to see-such great memories -

Ron M

  

I share Ron's fond memory as I have spent my days between 1971 and early 1990 there.     It was a beautiful and architect prize winning building.       Sun Chemical continued to own the building after we all moved out in early 1990 (some to Columbus, GA and many of us to Ft Lee or Carlstadt, New Jersey.    It was occupied by the Westchester Social Service agency for a while but after it moved out to a nearby larger building the building  as far as I can determine,  remained unoccupied for a long time.       It was built before the energy crunch and probably was not very energy efficient for  modern needs.      So it is not surprising to see it being demolished/renovated to a new version.         Ken