No ugly Christmas sweaters here. We're getting seasonal this #TextileTuesday with operator Howard Lowe and his whole deal. Lowe is seen here in a circa 1945 photograph, doing his thing in the 100-foot long control room of the Belle, West Virginia plant of the DuPont Company's Ammonia Department.
Lowe and his colleagues handled production equipment for the entire nitrile building from this central location. In this photograph, Lowe is checking a gauge on one of the fourteen panels controlling the processes by which adipic acid and ammonia are combined in the making of the nylon intermediate known as adiponitrile. From 1937 to 1946, the Belle Works provided the chemical foundations for the entire world's supply of nylon.
This photograph is part of Hagley Library's collection of DuPont Company Product Information photographs (Accession 1972.341). To see more material from this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.