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. 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. Soon its mission was altered and it became a large industrial research facility focused on innovative advancements in chemistry.

James R. Thomen (1926-) was manager of the Experimental Station from 1975 to 1985 when he retired. Thomen earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Rice University in 1945. A Master of Business Administration in Statistics and Finance from University Texas in 1948. And his Doctorate degree in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University in 1955.

Thomen began working at the DuPont Company as a research engineer in 1953 in Richmond, Virigina. He worked in a variety of supervisory postions, then as plant and site managers at plants in Richmond, Virigina and Florence, South Carolina. He worked as a safety management consultant after his retirement.