E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was established in 1802 by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) and his son Eleuthère 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 products toward sportsmen and hunters. Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, the company shifted its focus away from gunpowder production and toward chemistry innovations.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company began a research program in dyes in 1916 to take advantage of the wartime disruption of German supplies of dyestuffs. The Jackson Laboratory was established by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company at its Deepwater, New Jersey, dye works in 1917. It was named for Oscar R. Jackson (1855-1916), a chemical engineer who had been superintendent of the Repauno dynamite works in the late nineteenth century.

Beginnng in the 1920s, the Jackson Laboratory produced tetraethyl lead, neoprene, man-made elastomers, the first fluorocarbons used in refrigerants, Teflon, and vinyl fluoride.

In 1960, the Organic Chemicals Department's process-development activities were merged with the research program at the Jackson Laboratory and the Experimental Station (Wilmington, Delaware) to create a Research and Development Division. With the formation of the Chemicals, Dyes & Pigments Department in January 1978, Jackson absorbed the Chambers Works Manufacturing Department (Deepwater, New Jersey) and the Colored Pigments Research Department.