E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. It was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834). The company began with the production of gunpowder. Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, it shifted its focus away from gunpowder production and toward chemistry innovations.

The Photo Products Department was formed in December 1941. It was the successor of a firm that began initially as the DuPont-Pathé Film Manufacturing Corporation in 1924, for the manufacture and sale of cinema film out of the DuPont Parlin works, in Parlin, New Jersey. When Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) purchased Pathé Exchange, Inc. in 1931, the DuPont Film Manufacturing Corporation became a Pathé Exchange subsidiary and, therefore, now part of RKO. By 1941, the DuPont Company purchased all its shares and, as the sole shareholder, dissolved the company and formed the Photo Products Department.

The products it manufactured expanded from cinema film and included an array of medical products related to x-ray film and other photographic film products. Photo products were manufactured at plants in addition to the Parlin works, such as the Rochester plant in New York; Glasgow plant in Newark, Delaware; and the Brevard plant in North Carolina. The Photo Products Department was headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.