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Four Blocks From Terror

Jeffrey Allen was hard at work in the New York Stock Exchange's fifth-floor in-plant when terror struck from the skies.

Just four blocks away, two hijacked airplanes slammed into the World Trade Center, filling the blue September sky with smoke, fire and fear.

"We heard the explosions," Allen recalls.

But that was only the beginning. Told to stay in the building, he and his coworkers experienced the double horror of watching the towers collapse on television and feeling the earth shake beneath their feet.

"All the dust and the smoke came over here and we couldn't even see across the street," he says. "It was a nightmare—and it was real."

The smell of smoke flooded in through the air vents. Allen says he thought he was going to die.

Around 11:30 his staff was allowed to leave. They stepped outside to a much different world than the one they had seen when they arrived.

"It was like walking on the moon, with all the white dust," he says.

Allen and his coworkers began the long trek home, where they stayed for several days. The Stock Exchange remained closed for a record four days.

Though the in-plant—the closest one to the catastrophe—was not damaged nor filled with dust from the collapse, life there has definitely not been the same since the disaster. It took a while for work to start trickling back; the in-plant's shocked customers had much more on their minds. Even now, security is so much tighter that deliveries of paper and other supplies—even mail—are slow in coming.

But Allen and his 16 employees have their lives, and that's a lot to be thankful for.

"That was a day that I'll never forget," he declares, "even if I try."

Doing Their Part

In the chaos of September 11, New York City struggled to create order.

To help handle the crowds evacuating the island, a crisis center was set up across the Hudson River in New Jersey's Liberty State Park, which once commanded a breathtaking view of downtown Manhattan.

Very quickly, the paperwork piled up, and the operation realized it needed copiers on site. That's when Ed Krupa got a call. Krupa, administrator of the State of New Jersey's printing program, handles the procurement of all printing and copying equipment for the state. He immediately called Minolta and its dealer, Allister Business Machines.

Though installations usually take about two weeks, he says, a "loaner" copier was at the site within hours. By the next day, Minolta had delivered new copiers from its warehouse.

"They were very accommodating," Krupa says.

In all, he handled the procurement and delivery of nine copiers to the site, repeatedly calling for status reports until deliveries were made.

Meanwhile, down in Washington, D.C., the Government Printing Office was also playing a role in the aftermath of the attacks. The GPO printed 4,500 copies of the program for the September 14 "Day of Prayer and Remembrance" services, held in the National Cathedral.

The job came from the White House at about 1 a.m. on the 14th. The eight-page, black-and-white, saddle-stitched program, with a cover, was printed and delivered by noon.

Spokesman Andrew M. Sherman says GPO has also printed several million special notices for the Internal Revenue Service targeted at people affected by the disaster. A number of rush jobs for the military have also been printed by GPO, he says.

GPO printed the congressional resolutions condemning the September 11 attacks and authorizing the use of force against terrorism, as well as new legislation against terrorism.

Digital Swap

When Gary Williford first looked at the Heidelberg Digimaster 9110, he realized it could probably handle the same jobs and the same volumes as his Xerox DocuTech 6135. So he started considering a change.

"We would have taken either machine. The real issue was the cost," says Williford, director of the University of Tennessee's 46-employee Graphic Arts Service department.

When the bidding ended, the 9110 had won out. Danka installed two of the machines, one in Williford's main shop, located in Knoxville, and the other in one of his five copy centers.

"The quality is superb," he raves. "The resolution looks good. Fine screens reproduce very well."

He's also happy with the air knife feeder that allows the shop to run either short- or long-grain papers reliably. Another key feature, he says, is the machine's ability to display the time required to finish a job in progress.

"It makes communication a lot easier," he says. The 9110 operator can tell the bindery when to expect the job, and customers can quickly find out when their work will be ready.

Though Williford acknowledges some initial difficulties with the 9110s, Danka was able to make adjustments, he says.

One 9110 is linked to a Xerox DigiPath front end. The other uses a Heidelberg front end and 65-ppm scanner. About 70 percent of the jobs going to these machines still arrive as hard copy, Williford says. At times, jobs are scanned at one location and e-mailed to one of the copy centers as PDFs.

Williford is trying to replace the analog copiers in his satellite centers with digital versions, and has added three 600-dpi Xerox Document Centre 470 digital copiers. These machines are networked, allowing the in-plant to transfer PDF files via e-mail between all of the centers.

POD Systems Replacing Copiers

United States firms spent $3.1 billion in 2000 for black-and-white print-on-demand systems and their related services and supplies, according to CAP Ventures, a strategic consulting firm. That market is growing 20.4 percent per year and will reach $8 billion in 2005.

These figures appear in a new CAP Ventures study of the black-and-white print-on-demand market. One of the big findings is the rapid transition over the next five years to print-on-demand systems from traditional segment five and six copiers.

"Production sites won't be buying copiers in the future. They will be purchasing networked print-on-demand systems with scanning, workflow and in-line finishing options," notes Jeff Hayes, a CAP Ventures director. Of the 312 print providers interviewed, only 6 percent plan to purchase a high-speed analog copier in the next 12 months, while 28 percent plan to buy a print-on-demand system.

News Briefs

• The Ohio State University has canceled the Big 10 Printing Conference due to low registration resulting from the September 11 attacks. This is the first time since 1967 the event has not been held. Indiana University will host the conference October 8-11, 2002.

• CreoScitex installed its 6,000th EverSmart scanner last month. To celebrate, the company is donating an EverSmart Select scanner to the Photography and Related Media program of the School of Visual Arts in New York.

• Fox River Paper plans to acquire the Gilbert Paper Co. business and selected assets from Mead Corp.

• Mohawk Paper Mills, of Cohoes, N.Y., recently celebrated its 70th year of business.

• Tri-State Litho, of Kingston, N.Y., recently unveiled a newly designed Web site offering online pricing for short-run book printing: www.tristatelitho.com.

• Agfa Corp. announced that it has agreed to acquire Autologic.