Finding Aids

Adolphe Amadee Fesquet (1833-1894) was a chemical engineer and the author of a number of textbooks and translated French technical works into English. The collection comprises four volumes of educational course notes from lectures on mechanics, metallurgical chemistry, architecture, and the Catholic faith.

The Allied Kid Company was a major manufacturer of kid leather and suede; it was one of the most important specialty leather firms in Wilmington. The records are a miscellaneous collection of Allied Kid Company materials preserved by Alexander Ulin of the Specialty Division of the company in Wilmington. The bulk of the records consist of laboratory and production notebooks giving chemical formulae and instructions for tanning and dyeing batches of hides, including calfskin, goatskin, and suede.

Carter Litchfield (1932-2007) an organic chemist who studied and specialized in edible fats and oils. In the course of his career Litchfield also built an interesting and significant collection of books, manuscripts, and ephemera relating to the history of fatty materials. The collection is arranged into seven series and includes his research with animal fats and fatty materials, collecting activities, research and publication on the history of oil mills around the world; the papers of Julius Lewkowitsch, the first authority on fats and fatty materials; the papers of Ellsworth C. Warner, founder of the Midland Linseed Products Company; and the correspondence of Frech Chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul

Charles A. Rosencrans (1908-1991) was an RCA engineer who specialized in radio transmission. His notebooks largely consist of fragmentary handwritten notes from both his career at RCA and from his studies in electrical and mechanical engineering at Lehigh University.

Charles J. Pedersen (1904-1989) was a research chemist with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company who spent most of his career at the Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, New Jersey, and the Elastomer Chemicals Department in Wilmington, Delaware. This collection consists of two laboratory notebooks from Jackson Laboratory from 1956.

Charles J. Pedersen (1904-1989) was a research chemist with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company who spent most of his career at the Jackson Laboratory in Deepwater, New Jersey, and the Elastomer Chemicals Department at Wilmington, Delaware. This notebook consists of notes in Pedersen's own hand, with extensive chemical formulas and diagrams of molecules, interspersed with copies of journal articles.

Charles J. Pedersen (1904-1989) spent more than forty years as a DuPont research chemist in the Organic Chemicals and Elastomer Chemicals departments. Pedersen’s early investigations led to the development of a dramatically improved process for manufacturing tetraethyl lead, an important gasoline additive. His discoveries relating to the degradative effects of heavy metals on petroleum products resulted in thirty patents for antioxidants and other related products. Pedersen’s greatest achievement, however, came toward the end of his career when he discovered a new class of molecules that he called "crown compounds." Twenty years after his ground-breaking discovery was first disclosed publicly, Pedersen shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Pedersen’s research notebooks provide detailed accounts of laboratory preparations and analytical procedures. Also included in this collection are files compiled by Pedersen relating to his original research on crown compounds, as well as his earlier research.

Charles Lee Reese Sr. (1862-1940) was a chemist and scientist at the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company from 1902 to 1931. Until 1900 he taught chemistry in several American schools, and then began his career in industrial research with the New Jersey Zinc Company. The collection consists of nineteen volumes of Reese's laboratory notebooks, most dating from his tenure at New Jersey Zinc. A minority of the notebooks cover some of his early work for DuPont.

Charles Lee Reese, Sr. (1862-1940) was a chemist and scientist at the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company from 1902 to 1931. The Charles L. Reese papers are a group of material from his student days, the texts of lectures and articles, biographical materials and genealogical notes.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company was a chemical company and began a research program in dyes in 1916. By the late 1920s the DuPont Company was one of the four major U.S. dye producers and controlled twenty-five percent of the market. The records consist of notebooks and procedures on dyes, which describe the colors, uses, applications, tests, and fastness and dying properties for dyes manufactured by DuPont and its competitors.

F. Weber & Company, Inc. is an American manufacturer and supplier of artists' materials. Ernest Gustav Weber (1888-1965) was owner Frederick Theodore Weber (1845-1919)'s son. After their father's death, Weber and his brother, Frederick William Weber (1890-1972), were business partners running the supply store. This item is Ernest Gustav Weber's journal. The journal contains income and expenses from 1905 and 1906. There are also some lists of correspondence, addresses, and travel information.

Francis Gurney du Pont (1850-1904) was the youngest son of Alexis I. du Pont (1816-1857) and Joanna Smith du Pont (1815-1876), and grandson of Éleuthère Irénée "E.I." du Pont (1771-1834), founder of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont Company. The papers consist of du Pont's student lecture and laboratory notes; letters; technical notes and papers; records of gunpowder production; patent specifications and drawings; patent correspondence; and printed patents related to gunpowder.

Frederick J. LeMaistre (1879-1944) was a chemical engineer employed by the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Powder Company at its Eastern Laboratory for fourteen years. This collection consists of ten volumes; seven are LeMaistre's laboratory notebooks documenting his work on nitrates, nitroglycerin, artificial silk (rayon), pyralin, and solvents. Also included are two souvenir logbooks of tours by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and one Niagara Oil Company of Philadelphia cashbook.

George Levitt (1925-), a DuPont Company chemist working at the Experimental Station, discovered sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides in 1976 after two decades of experimentation. This collection consists of six of Levitt's laboratory notebooks documenting milestones in herbicide discovery.

Joseph Lincoln Gillson (1895-1964) was the chief geologist for the DuPont Company's Development Department from 1929 to 1960. As chief geologist he traveled all over the world making explorations in search of sulfur, ilmenite, fluorspar, barytes, celestite, and other raw materials, as well as conducting investigations in search of ground water supplies, foundations, and general site studies. This is a small collection that consists of a set of notebooks and related documents from Gillson's time working for the DuPont Company, as well as a set of papers and related documents from consulting projects he did during his retirement.

Joshua Gilpin (1765-1841) was a Philadelphia merchant and paper manufacturer. His notebook describes the process of chlorine bleaching, with drawings and formulae.

Joshua Gilpin (1765-1841) was a Philadelphia merchant and paper manufacturer. The collection includes microfilm copies of Gilpin's notes on the bleaching of pulp in the manufacture of paper, with others on the same subject by Lawrence Greatrake (manager of the Gilpin mills) and William Stidolph.

Two nineteenth-century pharmacists formula books, one from William King (1823-1903), of Philadelphia, and one from Edward S. Townsend (1844-1913), of Philadelphia and Dover, Delaware. William King was a Philadelphia druggist and worked in the oil business, first as a jobber and then as a refiner. Edward S. Townsend was a druggist in Philadelphia and Delaware.

Oliver M. Hayden (1893-1991) was a chemist who specialized in rubber and worked for E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company as manager of the laboratory where he was part of the team that developed Neoprene. His papers document his work on the Neoprene project, the activities of the Rubber Chemicals Division, and a draft of an oral history interview.

The Joseph Bancroft & Sons Company operated cotton textile mills in Wilmington, Delaware, where they manufactured, bleached, dyed, and finished a variety of cotton-made goods. The Pusey & Jones Corporation were shipbuilders, founders, and machinists of Wilmington, Delaware, which later expanded into papermaking machinery manufacturing. This collection consists of eleven small notebooks from the two companies regarding their work.

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA)’s Picture Tube Division, later known as the Video Component and Display Division, was headquartered at a research and production facility in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In 1987, the French firm Thomson Consumer Electronics acquired RCA’s consumer electronics business, including the Lancaster plant, and operated the facility until Thomson shut down its consumer electronics operations in 2005. Materials in the collection document a diverse array of activities at the RCA/Thomson Lancaster plant between the facility’s early days of operation and its closure. Corporate memoranda, correspondence, product technical data, photographs, and audiovisual materials trace the development of RCA/Thomson’s picture tube product line. Corporate publications chronicle major moments in company history.

Roy J. Plunkett (1910-1994) was the discoverer of Teflon, while working as a chemist at the DuPont Company. Plunkett's laboratory notebook documents the discovery of Teflon at DuPont's Jackson Laboratory in 1938. The notebook documents the experiments that led to the effective control of the rapid and explosive polymerization of tetrafluoroethylene gas into a solid polymer.

The Schuylkill Navigation Company constructed a canal along the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia to the anthracite coal field near Pottsville between 1815 and 1825. The item is a small notebook with subscriptions to the company's loans in 1823 and 1824.

Wallis Gartside Hines (1919-2014) was a chemical engineer employed at the Kankakee Ordnance Works from 1942 to 1943, a war plant of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company located south of Joliet, Illinois. His notes describe the steps to be followed in the manufacture and refining of sodium and lead azide and for the laboratory analysis necessary for quality control.

William Douglass (1849-1925) worked his entire professional life in the steel industry. He was an educated steel worker and spent many years as foreman or superintendent at various jobs site, the majority being in Birmingham, Alabama. The papers are a collection of items partly documenting Douglass' career as a foreman in the steel industry in the Pittsburgh and Birmingham Districts from 1889-1915.

William E. Morris (1812-1875) was a civil engineer and railroad executive. The notebook contains fourteen separate specifications for canal and railroad work copied in longhand and a fifteenth in the form of an inserted printed handbill. They offer a good snapshot of early civil engineering practice and construction techniques. Evidence points to Morris as the notebook's author.

William Hasell Wilson (1811-1902) was a consulting engineer to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Wilson's notebook covers his early engineering career on the Philadelphia & Columbia and Philadelphia & Reading railroads. The notebook contains ink and wash drawings by Wilson, along with specifications and cost estimates for the construction of various types of track structure, bridges, turntables, stations and other buildings.

William Hasell Wilson (1811-1902) was a consulting engineer to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Wilson's notebook covers his early engineering career on the Philadelphia & Columbia and Philadelphia & Reading railroads. The notebook contains ink and wash drawings by Wilson, along with specifications and cost estimates for the construction of various types of track structure, bridges, turntables, stations and other buildings.

William Liseter Austin (1852-1932) was an executive of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. Baldwin Locomotive Works was a manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 until 1972. This small collection consists of six pocket notebooks carried by Austin on separate business trips between 1879 and 1892. The trips were undertaken to confer with representatives of Baldwin's customer railroads concerning proposed designs or faulty performance of Baldwin locomotives.

Engineer's notebook kept by future DuPont Company vice president Willis F. Harrington (1882-1960) while an entry-level engineer at the Barksdale Works in Wisconsin.