Donated by Ralph A. Stanziola
Ralph A. Stanziola, a consultant and teacher of color technology, was born in Philadelphia in 1931, received his B.S. degree in Chemistry from the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science (now Philadelphia University), and resided most of his life in New Jersey. In his early years, at the Research and Technical Service for the Dyes Department of the American Cyanamid Company, Ralph learned color technology from such pioneers as Orrin W. Pineo and Edward I. Stearns. He next served for nine years as Technical Representative and General Sales Manager for the Davidson and Hemmendinger Company, and later became a Sales Manager for the Kollmorgen Corporation Color Systems division, which had acquired Davidson and Hemmendinger. He died on August 25, 2007, in Bridgewater, NJ, at the age of 75. He was married to Elsie Perantoni Stanziola.
In 1970, Ralph co-founded Applied Color Systems, Inc., where he eventually became the Executive Vice President and Technical Director. In May 1985, Ralph founded Industrial Color Technology, a consulting company under whose auspices he solved many industrial problems involving color control. For the rest of his life, Ralph remained a consultant for ACS (later named Datacolor), instructed their color technology seminars, and helped to create the first video training series on color technology.
98.1 Color Rule
Ralph held five US patents [1–5] and authored a large number of technical papers and presentations. He developed the Color Curve System for color communication and helped The Glad Products Company to develop the now-famous “Glad Difference,” Yellow and Blue Make Green® seal. Less familiar will be his development (with Bob Swain of Chroma Corp.) of a method of using a colored sample to test the wear of a metal piece. The test consists of extruding a molded plastic piece made of component materials of two different colors and monitoring the color of the mixture. Earlier, Ralph developed the first colorant-dispenser system driven by computer color matching (1979) and patented a Maxwell-disk-based color simulator (1980). He also co-developed an asymmetrical color-tolerancing system using artificial intelligence algorithms (1991), a photonic visual color simulator using LEDs (late 1990s), and a new version of the Color Rule for testing observers and light booths for metamerism (2006).
Ralph joined the ISCC in 1962 and was an active member for the rest of his life. He co-chaired several ISCC meetings: the annual meeting in Princeton in 1992 that celebrated the 25th anniversary of the AIC; the 1994 joint meeting with the DCC; and the 2003 Williamsburg Conference on Industrial Color Problems held at Philadelphia University. He was instrumental in setting up the Education Interest Group and was the first to chair the Industrial & Applied Color Interest Group. In recognition of these contributions, Ralph received the 2004 Nickerson Service Award, and in 2005 became an Honorary Member of the ISCC. He also served as Color Research and Application’s Special Editor for Industrial Applications for 10 years.
In 1995, the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry presented Ralph with their Finest Faculty Award. As a member of the Federation of Societies for Coatings Technology, he received the Armin J. Bruning Award for his outstanding contribution to the science of color in the field of coatings technology. He was also a member of the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists, and the Detroit Colour Council.
Ralph’s numerous lectures included computer color-matching seminars at the Rensselaer Color Measurement Laboratory (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) and at the Munsell Color Science Laboratory (Rochester Institute of Technology). The many personal anecdotes he told in his color courses showed a wealth of experience not available in any book. Some urged him to write a book, but he preferred the humbler route of interacting directly with the world and with other people.