I was building 3 floor 6th Floor Overseer for a number of years during the late 70s, and we were the sole floor responsible for printing larger quantities of Bibles (one million was about the smallest run we did in English, up to 5 million at a whack), AID books, and anything else printed on cigarette paper. The day before I left Bethel I was appointed assistant Pressroom Overseer. I gave them a surprise by not going back, after the Franz incident. :-)) Shows how much I cared about their prestige.
The GB was about to spend 60 million dollars on converting 60 MAN presses (40 at Brooklyn, then the Farm, Italy, etc.) that in the end cost them $400,000+ each. They were letterpress (obsolete then!) and because they used lead plates and took so long to "make ready" before a job, they were not suitable for color printing of anything but shallow one-color pages. The Japanese wanted to convert them to offset for $1 million each, and without dryers! The GB wanted to print the new "My Book of Bible Stories" in full color and magazine size.
We freaked. They wanted to print full color books on a letterpress?? Besides all the other cost-inefficient aspects of this, the major thing that was lacking was DRIERS for the ink on the paper. Letterpress simply punched depressions in the paper where the ink hid until it was dry. But you couldn't print one color on top of the other without a mess. I suggested to Tom Cabeen that we should run the web up two stories to Calvin Chyke's office to let his hot air dry the paper, then send it back down via rollers to the sixth floor.
So Tom's proposal to purchase twelve Harris offset presses for $12 million (about $1 million each) and do the job perfect, and sell ALL the MANs for CHEAP, in spite of all our cost accounting studies, trips to the Government printing office in DC, and pleas to the factory overseers like Wheelock ("wheels") and Calvin Chyke, it was too much for their egos, and it was a "waste of money" to "throw away" 60 presses, kept our proposal under wraps. (They wasted FAR MORE money the way things were!) I had been in charge of experimental printing for a year, so was directly involved, plus I was the only one to get the Wood-Hoe press running any production after years of mechanics worked on it and quit.
The Watchtower was grossly inefficient because they wouldn't listen to the outside printing world. $millions were wasted in paper and downtime each year. The $1.6 million Wood-Hoe was a disaster - the books looked like each page was rubber-stamped. I printed 100,000 "Truth" books and took copies to Max Larson. They dumped them on the Bethelites cheap and later got rid of the press. When the monster ran it shook the entire building, the swaying had to make the machine shop two floors below shut down because their lathes went off it was so bad.Finally Tom took the matter to Dan Sydlik (his friend) and the Factory Committee had not even mad the proposal known to the GB! That flipped the switch, and they converted to offset, sending the MANs to the other branches. :-)) They were peons anyway.
I think they are finally listening to outsiders as to how one inch of extra margin in paper can cost a lot of money. One 16-page magazine is ONE SIGNATURE, meaning it could be run on one press two-copies up, instead of one copy at 32 pages. So they are learning eficiency. It doesn't necessarily mean they are hurting for money, it's just that they finally wised up. (Of course their whole printing operation must run at a loss now).
So I made light of the story in my spare time on 3-6 by putting together comics like these.
from my "Bethel Files" on www.randallwatters.org:
http://www.randallwatters.org/Bethel/toons/convert1.htm
the
Pressroom Conversion
Enigma (part I)
It all started when a busload of Japanese businessmen blitzed Bethel in the late 70's and took pictures of everything imaginable that could possibly be redesigned or improved. We knew it was a bad omen. We were "sitting ducks" for such schemes, being isolated from the current printing technology of the world around us. We had the truth, THEY didn't.
The players in this drama are as follows:
Calvin Chyke and Richard Wheelock(factory committee) (Colonel Klink and Sargeant Shultz, for you "Hogan's Heros" fans)
Tom "Cab" Cabeen, Jim "Peach" Petrie and Randy "Watt" Watters(pressroom overseers) (angels, of course!)
Milan Miller, Harry Johnson and Cal Cruder (press installer and his mechanics) (Dogbert w/spectacles, Jay Leno pussy-whipped and the Lone Ranger)
younger publisher:Boy, Cal, with all that time you spent at Bethel, you must have done a lot to advance Kingdom interests in the pressroom...Cal:I remember the nyloprint... (crank the reels up!)
[Nyloprint was a plate material made of plastic that appeared a promising alternative to the expensive route of converting to offset. Believe me, we tried everything first!]
Cal:All of our printing looked like CRAP! I figured out the REAL solution...[It was opposing atomic charges between the plates and God knows what else.
Naturally, we mocked him behind his back!]
Cal: But then there were these unbelievers...Harry: ...And I thought it was the bearers! (printing cylinder end-bearers)Cal:But Milan, surely any atomic physicist can fix it!Milan:I'm TOO BUSY! Besides, it's static electricity, not "plus" or "minus"!
Milan: We need to record the minutes of this meeting.
Cal:Minutes! We can't count just minutes!
Milan:How come?
Cal:This represents half of my life in research and lab tests and consultation and...
Harry:But we must check the bearers!
[Later, after actually VISITING other printing facilities and asking questions, we discovered that (duh!) we were just asking too much of an old technology, and we needed to get offset presses!]
Cal:Here I am the only one who worries about a moronic problem that no one could possibly give a damn about! Then, after 24 minutes, they solve the problem in a couple of seconds, and they all get together at the end and chuckle at me!!
Harry: But why insist on having such dumb premises anyway?
Cal:I will no longer throw my pearls before swine!
[Cal is deflated and he and Edda decide to leave Bethel and start a new life.]
Harry:I hope this gets you home okay, Cal.
Cal:I'm sure it will, Harry.
Harry:I just hope it's able to tow the other two vehicles behind!
[other press mechanics left, too!]
NEXT in Part II: How to tell the factory committee
that we HAVE to go offset, since our alternatives don't work!
