44 



NatioTial Resources Planning Board 



For nearly a hundred years the du Pont Company 

 apphed chemical knowledge to improve the quality and 

 increase the number of its products, but it was not 

 until 1902 that scientific research became a clearly 

 defined part of the company's policy. In that year 

 the Eastern Dynamite Company, which controlled 

 several other d}Tiamite manufacturing companies, es- 

 tablished under the guidance of Charles L. Kcese the 

 Eastern Laboratory in Gibbstown, N. J. Two years 

 later the Experimental Station was established, and in 

 1906 it was installed in its present location near 

 Wilmington, Del. 



The Experimental Station was under the jurisdiction 

 of the company's development department until 1911 

 when, together with the Eastern Laboratory, it be- 

 came part of the newly created chemical department, 

 which for the next 10 years directed all of the company's 

 research. Although originally organized for research 

 in explosives, the chemical department, following the 

 general diversification and expansion of the company's 

 business, soon extended its activities into such fields 

 as dyestuffs, textiles, synthetic organic chemicals, 

 heavy chemicals, and pigments. 



Research had become such an important factor in 

 the success of the company by 1912 that a United 

 States court, in a decree which divided the company's 

 business by establishing two independent competing 



organizations — the Hercules Powder Company and 

 the Atlas Powder Comi)any — stipulated that the labo- 

 ratories of the du Pont Company should serve the two 

 new companies for a period of 5 years. Back of this 

 requirement was the fear of the court that new develop- 

 ments in the laboratories, unless made available, might 

 prevent the success of the new companies." 



In 1922 a complete reorganization of the manufac- 

 turing, sales, and research activities of the company 

 resulted in the decentralization of research, which 

 today is carried on by nine major operating depart- 

 ments, two controlled subsidiaries, and the chemical 

 department. The research work of the operating de- 

 partments and the subsidiaries is concerned largely with 

 their respective branches of industry and technology. 

 The chemical department is concerned not so much 

 with applied research problems as with the exploration 

 of new fields of science and pioneering investigations 

 aimed at the development of new products and proc- 

 esses. Thus, insofar as fundamental research and long- 

 range I'esearch are concerned, the chemical department 

 serves the entire range of the company's activities. 

 Nylon, which represents a wholly new family of or- 

 ganic compounds of the class of polyamides, is a no- 

 table result of the fundamental research of tliis depart- 

 ment. In the fields of explosives, powders, dyestuffs, 



»• American chemical industries, p 1095. See footnote 96. 



Figure 7. — The First Laboratory of E. I. du Pont do Nemours and Company, Incorporated, Was Housed in this Building, Erected 



About 1802, Wilmington, Delaware 



