E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (also known as the DuPont Company) was reincorporated on February 26, 1902, as successor to the partnership Eleuthère Irénée "E.I." du Pont (1771-1834) and his father, Pierre Samuel "P.S." du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817), had organized in 1801 for the purpose of manufacturing gunpowder in the United States. During the twentieth century, the company diversified beyond gunpowder and explosives into the broader chemicals industry.

Three du Pont cousins, Alfred I. du Pont (1864-1935), T. Coleman du Pont (1863-1930), and Pierre S. (P.S.) du Pont (1870-1954), purchased the company to keep management within the du Pont family. In the year following reincorporation, the company began experimenting with new forms of organization, creating an Executive Committee on which both the corporate officers and departmental heads were represented. In 1902, DuPont established its first formal research and development laboratory, the Eastern Laboratory, via the subsidiary Eastern Dynamite Company in New Jersey.

Company president T. Coleman du Pont established the Executive Committee in 1903, with member Arthur J. Moxham (1854-1931) charged with overseeing what was to be known as the Development Department. This department would oversee resource development and experimental research. To this end, the company established the Experimental Station in Wilmington, Delaware, on the banks of the Brandywine River across from DuPont's first black powder works. This facility first focused its research on explosives, but after a decade or so, it became a vehicle for the company's goals of diversifying the business as it faced competition from the military for smokeless powder production and pressure from the government's antitrust scrutiny.

In 1908, Pierre S. du Pont took over direction of the Experimental Station. In 1911, the company's corporate structure was reorganized, and the Chemical Department was formed to centralize the company's expanding research efforts.

During the First World War, DuPont became the largest supplier of munitions for the Allies, and the Development Department was assigned the responsibility of identifying products that could be produced in war plants after the war's end. The company expanded its product lines to include dyes, celluloid plastics, rubber-coated fabrics, acids, heavy chemicals, pigments, paints, and varnishes.

A complete reorganization followed in 1921 in response to the 1920-1921 economic recession. The company was reorganized into autonomous operating or industrial departments based on product lines and coordinated by a central corporate office, with research remaining based at the Experimental Station. During the 1920s, the company used its wartime profits to expand further into synthetics. In 1922, the company established a Fundamental Research Program as it set up laboratories devoted to physical, polymer, and organic chemistry.

The Chemical Department's second director, Charles M.A. Stine (1882-1954), initiated a formal program of fundamental research in physical and organic chemistry, physics, and chemical engineering in 1928. Wallace Hume Carothers (1896-1937), an authority on polymer chemistry, came to work for the DuPont Company under this new program that same year. Less than a decade later, Carothers and his team laid the groundwork for the commercial development of neoprene and developed nylon.

The Chemical Department was renamed the Central Research Department in 1958. In 1975, it was combined with the Development Department to form the Central Research and Development Department. The remaining elements of the Development Department became the Corporate Plans Department.