News

On January 19, 2012,

Eastman Kodak Company and its U.S. subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for Chapter 11 business reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

The business reorganization will enable Kodak to bolster liquidity in the U.S. and abroad, monetize non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities, and enable the Company to focus on its most valuable business lines.
See formal press realease here: http://www.kodaktransforms.com

The ExScite community mourn the passing of a genius- Steve Jobs of Apple.

Apple has been the platform of choice in the graphic arts industry. As we all recall, Scitex has not diverted its skills and software innovation to the Mac platform, which quickly spelled the end for its workstation business.

One group at Scitex was trying hard to port the Scitex ingenuity into the Mac, under the leadership of Eli Israeli .
Ken Hurtubise was the application/marketing power behind the Scitex Visionary, and he posted this at ExScite members’ board:

“I had the opportunity to meet Steve Jobs a couple of times while I was at Scitex. His death reminded me of some of the “insanely great” products the Scitex team created with the Macintosh.

For those of you involved in the Visionary and VIP projects, here is some trivia you might be unaware of or forgotten:

– Scitex was the first company to attach a color printer and color scanner to a Macintosh. Even beating Apple’s own internal developments.

– For a time Scitex bought more high end Macs than any other company in the world.

– Color Macs from Apple started out being priced the same as a Sun workstation in Europe. We pushed them to have a more rational international pricing policy.

– At product launch, we sold 13 Visionary Beta sites for $80,000 cash up-front. That was important since Scitex was having cash flow issues.

– We wouldn’t tell anyone the price until the end of the introduction. One customer, who had to leave before the presentation was over, left us with a blank check and told us to fill it in and tell him the amount at the end of the day.

– With Quark, we created what became the concept of “extensions”. We taught Quark how to do quality text processing and they taught us how do some things in color on the desktop.

– I first offered Paul Brainerd (the president of Aldus, maker of PageMaker) the ability to work with Scitex on the Visionary concept. He turned me down, saying that they wanted to focus on the B&W office market instead. Years later he admitted to me that it might not have been the best decision he ever made.

– The original agreement between Scitex and Quark was a handshake agreement and a letter of understanding, handwritten on the front and back of piece of notebook paper at a Seybold conference.

– Adobe never wanted to do a software rip on the Mac. They only agreed to do it after we ported the Pipeline Technologies interpreter to the Mac and demoed it at a trade show”.

We have received this message from Vincent Bourke, the brother of Yvonne Bourke (married Sanua, but divorced in 2006) .

It is with great sadness I have to inform you that Yvonne Bourke passed away last March 28th.

Yvonne had just turned 50 and leaves two daughters, Jasmin (17) and Amy (16).

She worked many years for Scitex in Brussels back in the late 70’s and 80’s (as also my two other sisters Lorna and Fiona, but for shorter periods). Yvonne lived in Belgium most of her life, in London (Scitex office) for a few years, in Paris and then moved to Germany for ten years before relocating to Israel.

Yvonne knew quite a few people from Scitex and remained in contact with several. We (the siblings) have located whoever we remembered but it is highly probable we forgot some or are not aware of other people Yvonne may have known.

We have received this sad not from the ExScite Ray Fair:

It is with great sadness and regret that I inform you of Jeff Hurley’s passing on May 17 in Littleton, CO.

Jeff was one of the original Application Engineers at Scitex America working out of the Bedford MA office. I had the privilege of working with Jeff at many printing sites and trade shows. He was truly one of a kind. RIP Jeff, RIP.

Jeff is survived by wife Lucie, daughter Sarah, son Kristopher, mother Marilyn, brother Michael and 2 grandchildren.

The former STA’s engineer Charlie Baum has passed away.

We were saddened to hear that Charlie Baum died in January 2010.

Charlie was one of the first ever service engineers in Scitex America when the office was still located in Stamford Ct. and later in Manhattan NY, and was still called STNA. Charlie started under the then president Dick Jaffe in 1974 and later under Bob Pollack. Eddie Borkovksy, VP customer Support (who has provided a couple of the pictures), was his boss from 75-79. Later, Charlie worked out of New York after the office was relocated to Boston and renamed STA. Those of us who worked with Charlie remember him as a smiley face with good nature, yet as an opinionated and resourceful technical engineer, who could improvise and resolve problems.

We have lost track of Charlie after he had left the company. The pictures below are of a meeting of Eddie and Charlie in NY in 2002, and Charlie at work in a trade show.

KODAK LAUNCHING THEIR NEW 1000 EMPLOYEE R&D CENTER IN ISRAEL WHILE UNDERGOING STRATEGIC GLOBAL RESTRUCTURING
Kodak commercial printing president says: “We will continue to invest here and we are expecting to see the business grow accordingly.”

Kodak’s President of Graphic Communications Group, Jim Langley visited Israel for the launching of its new R&D center which employs 1,000 people. Langley stated, “In Israel there is already proven experience in revolutionary printing technology. . . We will continue to look for ways to improve our business with the talent that exists here.” Kodak has a history of investing in Israel, including the 2005 acquisition of Creo / Scitex worth $988 million, which specializes in digital workflow systems. (Source: Launch pad Israel).
Kodak has established Research and development is headquartered in Rochester, New York. Other U.S. groups are located in Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas, Texas; Oakdale, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut; and San Jose and San Diego, California. Outside the U.S., groups are located in England, France, Iceland, Israel, Germany, Japan, China, Singapore and Canada. Kodak’s total annual R&D budget is more than $700, of which the Graphic Communications Group R&D budget worldwide is about $200M.

Diana with Ben Gurion.

With great sadness, we announce that Diana Shemtob passed away in Israel on March 17, at the age of 72.
Diana was born in Singapore, and spent World War II in a Japanese concentration camp, together with other Jews and citizens of Western countries who were living there when the war broke out.  After the war ended, she came to Israel and took part in building the new state.
A native English speaker, Diana joined Scitex in 1973 as English-language secretary.  As one of Scitex’ first 100 employees, Diana got into the company “on the ground floor”.  Over the next 25 years, she performed a wide range of administrative and secretarial jobs, and was the first of the administrative personnel to use a Word Processor, on the old VAX computer.  In those days, Diana could be seen walking the halls of the office in Herzliya carrying the reels of tape on which her text files were stored.
In addition to her other skills, Diana was a talented seamstress, and made it a habit to knit a new pair of booties for every Scitex baby born in the Israel office, as well as for some of her Scitex colleagues.
Diana was absolutely dedicated to Scitex, and never let go of a project until it was finished to her satisfaction.
Following her retirement, Diana took great pleasure in attending the “Scitex ladies’ reunions”, which a group of ex-Scitex women took turns hosting over the years, in order to maintain our friendships and keep up with each others’ post-Scitex lives.  The most recent of the reunions was held in February of this year at the home of Galit Felix.
As a young woman in her early 20’s, Diana served in the Israeli air force. One of the pictures she was always very proud to show around was of her with a friend (sitting in the Jeep, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s prime minister and minister of defense, during one of his visits at the air force).

Diana was a cherished member of the Scitex family, and we shall all miss her greatly.