April 27th marks the birthdate of the chemist Wallace Hume Carothers, credited with leading the invention of Neoprene artificial rubber and Nylon synthetic fiber. Carothers worked as a chemist in E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Fundamental Research Program from 1928 until his death in 1937.

Carothers' work at the DuPont Experimental Station focused on polymerization and the ways in which polymers structurally analogous to cellulose and silk could be prepared. In early 1930 the chemists in Carothers' laboratory produced neoprene, the first laboratory-synthesized fiber and first commercially successful synthetic rubber. This ca. 1932 photograph from Hagley Library's DuPont Company Product Information photographs (Accession 1972.341) shows Carothers demonstrating the properties of neoprene. Nylon, the first synthetic polymer fibre to be spun from a melt, was developed in 1934.  

This week's Hagley Vault post comes from our Lukens Steel Company photographs (Accession 1972.360) collection and shows the company's process for heat treatment of steel discs around the year 1950.

The Lukens Steel Company was a medium-sized, non-integrated steel company and one of the top three producers of steel plates in the nation. It was founded in Coatesville, Pennsylvania in 1810 and controlled by members of the Pennock, Lukens and Huston families in direct succession for over 180 years; the company is noted for being the first industrial company in the United States led by a woman, Rebecca Lukens (1794-1854).

Wednesday is is Tax Day, so we've invited some special guests to the Hagley Vault this week to give us a hand.

This 1955 photograph shows the 61 men and women chosen to represent the DuPont company's Tax, Legal, Payroll, Tabulating, Statistical, and General Ledger Departments, as well as the paperwork and office equipment used to manage the company's annual taxes and take care of compiling and directing individual employee withholding for the company's more than 117,000 workers.

This photograph is part of Hagley Library's DuPont Company product information collection collection (Accession 1972.341). The product information section was a division of the company's Public Relations Department that was organized in 1952. Its main directive was to create news releases accompanied by photographs that could be sent to trade journals and newspapers to create inexpensive publicity and indirect advertising for DuPont.