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 of gunpowder for the United States government. During peacetime, the company marketed their products 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 across from DuPont's first black powder works. Initially, the Experimental Station was to be a small laboratory to screen inventions that 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.