Fink's Plate

To most electrochemists Columbia University's Colin Garfield Fink is the man who found a practical way to make chromium stick to other metals by electroplating. Plump, grizzled Dr. Fink has done other valuable work electroplating with tungsten and rhenium but he worked longest and hardest with chromium. When he found that sulphate ions from ordinary sulphuric acid in his plating bath would do the trick, automobiles, kitchens and modern furniture began to take on a new appearance.

Dr. Fink took out his chromium-plate patent in 1926, eventually assigned it to United Chromium, Inc. of Manhattan. Few months ago United Chromium heard that General Motors Corp. was helping itself to the Fink process, indignantly entered suit against GM and two other defendants. They did not deny using the Fink process but argued instead that some details of the Fink process were of dubious merit, that other chromium-platers had preceded Dr. Fink anyway.

Sweeping these contentions aside, in Hartford, Conn. last week U. S. District Court Judge Edwin Stark Thomas, who four years ago cracked down on another meddler with the Fink process, found GM and the others guilty of infringement, enjoined them to stop, ordered a special master to examine profits and fix damages.

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