E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Éleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). The du Ponts purchased a mill site on the banks of the Brandywine River just North of Wilmington, Delaware. During wartime the company was a major supplier for the United States government. During peacetime, the company marketed their product towards sportsmen and hunters.

In 1903 the DuPont Company's Executive Committee established the Experimental Station, a research facility located on the banks of the Brandywine Creek across from DuPont's first black powder works. Initially, the Experimental Station was to be a small laboratory to screen inventions which were coming into the company from outside independent inventors, but soon its mission was altered. Both the Army and Navy, major consumers of DuPont powder, were being pressured to develop their own experimental capabilities as well as to build their own manufacturing plants. DuPont's executives saw this as a major threat to the company's smokeless powder business. They resolved to make the Experimental Station an instrument to keep the Company well in front of the military. The Executive Committee also intended that the Experimental Station serve as a general laboratory for research on black powder, smokeless powder, and dynamite.

Centralized research at the DuPont Company resulted from the company's need to diversify its product base after its 1902 reorganization. In 1911 the Chemical Department was organized, and all company research came under its jurisdiction. By 1922 research became decentralized with each manufacturing department having its own research division, but all research remained based at the Experimental Station. The Chemical Department was renamed the Central Research Department in 1958. In 1975, it was combined with the Development Department to form Central Research and Development Department.