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The Opti-Copy Imposer

This is an 1/8-scale model of a revolutionary, step-and-repeat camera, that was built in Kansas City and sold all over the world- beginning in the United States and Canada, then England, Germany, Australia and Japan.

1/8-scale model of the Opti-Copy Mark I (later, modified to a MkII) with a sliding copyboard. This (startlingly realistic) model was built by the machine shop that produced the actual cameras. Full sized Opti-Copy cameras were assembled by specialized machinists, coincidentally, called “model-makers” who had previously worked at the Vendo Company in Kansas City and who were used to building precise, intricate systems.

The company was owned by the Wally family who also owned the Western Blueprint Company in Kansas City. Jack Wally had worked as a photo-journalist for some years, and went to work for his father at Western Blue. While there, he started designing and selling his own reprographic cameras.

He eventually hit on the idea of a step-and-repeat camera for book and label printers. With his sons, he started a new manufacturing company in North KC called Opti-Copy. The company had a two major product lines, Litho– for the Graphic Arts market and Repro– for blueprints and engineering.

The Graphic Arts camera was named the Imposer. They called it that because, in book printing, pages on a large flat were printed in position so that the finished, printed sheet could be folded into a signature, and then trimmed and bound into a book. In the industry, the layout for correct placement of pages on a press sheet was called the imposition.

My dad, Ron Halsey, had been supervisor of the camera department at Kingsport Press in East Tennessee when they bought Opti’s first Imposer, S/N #001. (Kingsport had been, at one time, the largest book manufacturer in the world.) It wasn’t long till he went to work for them. Dad was the 6th person hired by Opti-Copy and in 1979, I became the 16th.

Ron Halsey in the 1970s at Opti-Copy, with a 32-page film flat shot on an Imposer. A flat of directory pages like this one would be exposed, directly onto a metal, photo-sensitive printing plate that would then be developed and loaded onto an offset press.

The systems were assembled in North KC and later at a new plant in Lenexa, KS. Opti was often visited by printers, film manufacturers and lens companies from all over the world. It seemed like someone visited every week to test a new film or light system. Opti was state-of-the-art, and enjoyed playing host to these companies as the collaborations were mutually beneficial. Once, forty of the largest publishers in Japan flew to Kansas City as a group to witness a demonstration.

The Opti-Copy Imposer could project pages or labels onto film flats, faster and more accurately than had ever been done, before. An 8- or 16-page flat could be produced in a couple of minutes. Press sheets of 100 labels could be set up and then run, automatically. The same jobs, when done by hand, were subject to human error and took much more time to accomplish.

After selling over 2,000 of the systems, in 1988, the Wally family sold the business to the Polychome Corp. and my Dad and I left the company. He wanted to start his own business, so with a partner, they founded ISI in Greensboro, NC. By that time, an Imposer system with all the “extras” cost around $250,000. Imaging Specialists bought, upgraded and operated 4 of these systems. We bought them, used (and for much less than a quarter of a million each!) By 1994 our family had bought out the partner.

This detail of the model, could easily be confused with an actual, full-sized camera.
The open-faced vacuum easel held large sheets of raw film on this- the darkroom side- of the camera.

We can now do, with modern systems and software, what would have once taken hours (or might even have been impossible) in the darkroom. But we continue to benefit from our experience and even some of our old Opti equipment.

A few years ago we traded Kingsport Press for the old Imposer #001. We are using its sliding copyboard (like the one on the model) in our photographic negative digitizing project.

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Volume 3 of the Ashe County Veterans History Project is available, now.

The latest in a series of books honoring veterans from Ashe County, North Carolina- the books feature veterans’ own accounts, family stories and photographs.
Imaging Specialists in Sparta, NC is proud to have helped the Ashe County Public Library with their Ashe County Veterans Project.
World War I Troops await transport in this photo from Robert Godbey in Volume II of the Ashe County Veterans History Book.
Robert Godbey
1894-1980
See Mr. Godbey’s story at the Ashe County Library Veterans History Project.
Find more about him and other volumes in his expansive account of his service at the
Ramsey Library, UNC Asheville
From Volume I of the project book in 2018.
Mr. Gentry is at the far left, posing with his sling shot in this great photo from Operation Desert Storm.
We added this public domain image of the “Bow view of USS Nicholas (DD-449) underway off San Francisco on 15 January 1944,” to Clint Johnson’s article in Volume III.
It is the ship depicted on the cover of his book, Tin Cans and Greyhounds: The Destroyers that Won Two World Wars from which the article is taken.
Photos of Lieutenant Colonel Lory Whitehead, her father and grandfather from her story in Volume III.
Two photos of WWII vet, Bob Nuckolls submitted by Sandra Church for this year’s edition.
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Images From Operation Frequent Wind

April 30, 1975- US Marines helped provide security for the evacuation of the last Americans in Vietnam and thousands of “at risk” Vietnamese during the Fall of Saigon. Operation Frequent Wind was a massive assembly of aircraft and ships that became the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
These photos were made by Master Gunnery Sergeant John Irwin, USMC (RET) when he served aboard the USNS Sgt. Truman Kimbro (T-AK-254).

The images are part of a collection of photos he has donated to the Alleghany Historical Museum.

The barge, in the photos, was an “ocean-going barge with a large group of people. Another ship had removed over a thousand from this barge and, when they could take no more, it was towed to us. When she came into sight, we could not believe the number of people still aboard.” After unloading, the barge was sunk by naval gunfire from a destroyer.

Imaging Specialists recently helped John publish his memoir, The Life Experience of MGySgt. John Ulus Irwin, Jr., USMC (Ret.) In the book, he recalls stories of his years of service in the United States Marine Corps. From the rescue of the Vietnamese refugees at the fall of Saigon, to becoming a Drill Instructor at Parris Island, posts on the Korean DMZ and in the Chilean Andes, then consulting with Kenyan Wildlife Service Rangers in Nairobi, John talks about the interesting people, exotic locations and unforgettable experiences he encountered during and after his career in the military.

On April 29th, the evacuation began in earnest. We sailed into the area where the evacuation ships were waiting, protected by destroyers. A Landing Ship Tank (LST) causeway was towed to us and lashed to our side as a loading platform. As the refugees were flown aboard the naval ships with landing platforms, they would be placed onboard boats for transfer to their evacuation ship.

Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters ferrying refugees.

The helicopters doing the evacuations would overfly the Kimbro in route and returning with their escorting Cobra gunships. They would overfly us on the way back and as the Cobra gunships passed you could see the evidence of expended ordinance. Now it was getting real.

Yun M. Kimbro, named for the ship (the M. was for Marines) was the first of 5 babies born while the ship was en route to Guam.

Yun M. Kimbro and family.

…a sentry was confronted by a man and a very pregnant woman. She was in labor! Our corpsmen quickly moved her to our berthing area and prepared for the birth of the first of five babies. Only one of the corpsmen had ever attended a birth but never assisted, so their anxiety level went up. With the baby on the way, I and another Marine held up a piece of tarp to separate her, the husband and two other children from the crowd. Yun M. Kimbro came into the world and you would have thought that we Marines were all the father!

The softcover, 6” x 9” book is 214 pages, with a black & white interior and it includes photos from John’s personal collection as well as from military sources.
Parents are cautioned- contains material that may be inappropriate for teens and younger.


The book is available for $16 from the Alleghany Historical Museum and Imaging Specialists, Inc., in Sparta, and online, at shop.starroute.net.

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Neutralizing Halftone Screens

High resolution scans of a continuous tone print- or even better- a continuous tone negative are the best when making a reproduction.

In order to print photographs on an offset printing press, it is necessary to “screen” images or reduce them to evenly spaced rows of various sized dots. The resulting image is called a halftone.

In our business, we often have to copy halftone or screened images. We’ve been working on some new processes to remove halftone screens and patterns from those images. Sometimes, a printed photo is all we have- the original has been lost, destroyed or, for whatever reason, we just don’t have access to it.

Unfortunately, when we try to reproduce a halftoned image, the new image generated by a printer or a monitor usually shows an undesirable, Moiré pattern. The pattern comes from the array of dots or pixels in the reproduction fighting with the scanned dot pattern in the original image- whether it is depicted on a monitor or on a printed sheet.

For years, when we wanted to reproduce a screened image, we would simply set the camera a little out-of-focus, so the individual dots wouldn’t be a problem. And in the digital age, we would use a “Gaussian blur” to achieve the same result.

But, we always lost details. The halftone process lost details that were present in the original image, and then, blurring a halftone for reproduction would cause a loss of even more detail.

Now, however, we have some powerful, new tools to remove these regular, mechanical patterns from a printed photo. And we can hold onto more detail than we’ve ever been able to, before.

Here are some of our first test images looped with the initial results.

Robert Halsey Hackler with his first wife, Bessie Doughton, from the book,
Alleghany County Heritage ©1983 Alleghany Historical- Genealogical Society, Inc.
Even this reduction of a screened image generates a conspicuous Moiré pattern.
Enlargement of the photo of Robert Hackler, above. While a moiré isn’t evident at this resolution, the distracting haltone dots are visible.
The actual surface anomalies in the paper are visible after de-screening!
This is a close-up of a photo printed in the 1970s on textured paper like a Kodak “Silk Print.” The popular surface inhibited fingerprints but proves problematic for reproductions.
Detail of a photo of the dedication of the R.A. Doughton Bridge Bridge on US21/US221 between Sparta, NC, and Independence, Virginia, from page-16 of the book,
The History of Alleghany County 1859-1976
©1976 Alleghany Historical- Genealogical Society, Inc..
Closeup of the scene above. While the surfaces look much better than the the edges, which still show a little dot pattern, the result still rivals a continuous tone image!
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New Titles from Star Route Books

We’re proud to announce the second in a series of companion volumes to the, online, Ashe County Veterans History Project by the Ashe County Public Library.

In 2018, Imaging Specialists worked with the library to develop a printed companion to their Veterans History Project, an online archive of veterans with ties to Ashe County, NC.
We designed the cover and pages using photos and text from their growing libguide database.
This year’s cover design incorporates an image from a World War I era War Bonds poster painted by Howard Chandler Christy in 1917.