| [Previous Story] [Next Story]
 |
GOOD INTENTIONS DuPont launched its famous slogan at the 1939 New York World's Fair to emphasize its products' role in improving people's lives.
PHOTOS BY PETER CUTTS |
FROM 1802 TO ETERNITY
DuPont marks its 200th year and expects to endure for a long time to come
MARC S. REISCH, C&EN NORTHEAST NEWS BUREAU
|
|
|
SELF-SUFFICIENT DuPont fabricated powder mill parts in its own machine shops. |
|
 |
|
RIOT When nylon stocking production resumed after World War II, women lined up to get them. |
|
 |
|
WATER POWER E. I. du Pont designed this water-powered powder-grinding wheel. |
In the space of 15 minutes, a visitor to Wilmington, Del., can see not only the company DuPont has become today, but also the company it was 200 years ago.
Downtown DuPont's modern office buildings are a beehive of activity. But not far away, along the Brandywine River, is DuPont's earliest manufacturing site--the Eleutherian Mills and adjacent Hagley Mills--where the company first manufactured black gunpowder.
July 19, 1802, was the day construction of the first black powder works began. But the money to finance the project had to come from somewhere. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. was first organized as a joint stock company in France on April 21, 1801. Eleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours had learned the art of gunpowder manufacture under the tutelage of chemist Antoine Lavoisier and was determined to put that knowledge to use in the newly independent U.S.
During its first 100 years, DuPont was principally a maker of gunpowder and explosives. But in 1902, a new generation of DuPonts realized that diversification would open new doors for the company.
The company had no sustained scientific research program up until then. But it began to build a permanent science research staff. In 1903, the company established the Experimental Station on a property not far from the original powder works on the Brandywine River.
Through a series of acquisitions and aided by research, DuPont expanded into new products such as paints, plastics, and dyes based on raw materials and by-products from the explosives business. Driving the diversification effort, in part, was the public outcry against DuPont's domination of the explosives business in the U.S.
Further research led to other advances such as refrigerants, synthetic fibers, Teflon nonstick fluoropolymers, Lycra spandex fibers, and Nomex fire-resistant fibers. In recent years the company has invested in and then pulled out of the petroleum market, spinning off Conoco in 1999. In the past decade, it has focused on biotechnology and electronics markets.
But DuPont's most famous Experimental Station discovery, nylon, isn't central to DuPont's welfare any longer. "Over the past 50 years, synthetic fibers were key to us. Over the next 50 years, it's going to be biotechnology. A lot of what we do will be traditional chemistry for a long time to come," Chairman and CEO Charles O. Holliday Jr. says. But biotechnology will have a growing influence. "We believe biotechnology married to chemistry will bring a lot of solutions in the future."
[Previous Story] [Next Story]
Chemical & Engineering News
Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society |
