IndxLstrial Research 



43 



work. Approximately 325 technical men, supplemented 

 by 320 operating, clerical, library, and legal assistants, 

 devote their entire time to research. 



When facilities for the study of certain problems are 

 unavailable in these three laboratories wholly under the 

 control and direction of the company, other laboratories 

 in institutions scattered throughout the country are 

 used by means of a fellowship plan. 



Dow Chemical Company 



In 1887 Herbert Dow, a student at Case School of 

 Applied Science in Cleveland, invented a new and 

 economical process for extracting bromine from brine. 

 Two years later he proceeded to put his electrolytic cell 

 to work in a small flour-mill shed in Midland, Mich. 

 Before very long his process was also adapted to the 

 extraction of chlorine from brine, with caustic soda as a 

 coproduct. These developments, at the end of 10 

 years, led to the consolidation of several parent com- 

 panies to form the Dow Chemical Company. 



A sister company, formed by Dow and his associates 

 in 1901, and later purchased by the Dow Chemical 

 Company, is conceded to have been the first one to 

 carry on a synthetic organic chemical process on a 

 commercial scale in America. The company manu- 

 factured sulfur chloride and reacted it with carbon 

 bisulphide, producing carbon tetrachloride which, in 

 turn, was treated with iron in the presence of water to 

 produce chloroform. 



The First World War shut off the European sources 

 of chemicals and stimulated the company's production 

 of aromatic organic compounds. The output of phenol 

 was increased to 30 tons a day, and a new process was 

 developed for the manufacture of synthetic brominated 

 indigo. 



The end of the war found the company in a critical 

 position; either it would have to develop efficient man- 

 ufactm-ing processes, or suffer enormous losses in 

 apparently useless buildings and machinery. Intensive 

 research proved to be the solution of the company's 

 problem. The old-time method for producing phenol 

 was discarded and a new process devised and placed in 

 operation. The next steps were to undertake the pro- 

 duction of the phenol derivatives, aspirin and synthetic 

 oil of wintergreen, and to utilize the byproducts from 

 indigo and phenol manufacture in making artificial 

 flavors and perfumes. Aniline was produced by a new 

 process based upon the action of ammonia upon chloro- 

 benzene. An alloy of magnesium metal, weighing 

 only one-fourth as much as iron, was manufactured in 

 quantities for airplane parts, portable tools, high-speed 

 machinery, and many other purposes. The company 

 was the first to produce a spray material of organic 

 origin which contained no arsenic or lead. 



Without constant research the Dow Chemical Com- 



pany could not have achieved such a record of accom- 

 plishments. Since 1919 when a group of organic re- 

 search chemists was formed and an adequate reference 

 library was established, there has been no let-up in the 

 intensity of the company's research in many fields, 

 mcluding organic and inorganic chemistry, biochem- 

 istry, physics, and metallurgy. Today 225 graduate 

 chemists and physicists, 270 technically trained engi- 

 neers, and 170 laboratory assistants continue to work on 

 problems new and old. 



E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company 



In no company in the country have chemistry and 

 chemical research played a more important part than 

 in E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. The 

 founder himself, E. I. du Pont, when 16 years old, had 

 begun to study chemistry in the laboratory of Lavoisier, 

 who was then in charge of the manufacture of gun- 

 powder for the French Government. In 1837 the direc- 

 tion of the company fell to Alfred du Pont, who had 

 been a former student of chemistry under Thomas 

 Cooper at Dickinson College and who was always 

 "contriving" a new instrument or experimenting in the 

 laboratory in an effort to improve the quality of the 

 powder made by the company. ^^ Henry du Pont, who 

 assumed the management in 1850, was not interested in 

 experimenting with new methods and even wrote to 

 various agents that he was satisfied that the powder 

 could not be improved. The search for new methods 

 and better products was continued, however, by Alfred 

 du Font's younger son, Lammot, a graduate of the 

 University of Pennsylvania. In 1857, as a result of the 

 latter's investigation, nitrate of soda was used in place 

 of nitrate of potash in the manufactui-e of blasting 

 powder, a substitution that not only benefited the 

 company financially but also represented an advance in 

 the art of powder making. '* Before the Civil War he 

 had accomplished much toward the development of 

 both black and brown prismatic powders. In an 

 attempt to carry out some "plant-scale experiments 

 on the separation of nitroglycerol from the waste acid," 

 for the purpose of recovering the latter, he was killed 

 by an explosion. The loss of this able chemist was a 

 serious one, but other members of the family carried 

 on his work. By 1884 the company had succeeded in 

 developing a brown prismatic powder which was 

 satisfactory to the Government.^' Francis G. du Pont, 

 an efficient chemical engineer, invented and developed 

 the du Pont smokeless powder and later, with the aid of 

 Pierre S. du Pont and others, a smokeless powder for 

 the Government's use. 



•' Du Pont, Mrs. B. Q. E. I. du Pont dc Nemours and Company, a history — 

 1802-1902. Boston, New York, Houehton Mifflin Co., 1920, pp. 72-73. 



" E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, a history— 1802-1902, p. 78. See foot- 

 note 95; Reese, Charles L. American chemical industries. E. I. du Pont de Ne- 

 mours and Co. Industrial and Enoineerint Chtmulry, 17, 1094 (October 1925). 



•' American chemical industries, pp. 1094-1095. See footnote 96. 



