Finding Aids

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). In 1903, the DuPont Company's Executive Committee established the Experimental Station, a research facility located on the banks of the Brandywine River across from DuPont's first black powder works. This small collection of materials from the Experimental Station relates to the buildings, conducting of research, and to submission of reports.

Edwin A. Gee (1920-2013) was trained as a chemical engineer and worked as a metallurgist for the United States Bureau of Mines before joining the DuPont Company in 1948. The papers of Edwin A. Gee are incomplete and represent only a small portion of his work in the Development Department and as a member of the Executive Committee. The surviving records have been arranged in two series that document Gee's involvement in important phases of the company's history: Patent documentation and Diversification and research and development strategy.

E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company’s R. & H. Chemicals Department manufactured and sold peroxides, cyanide of sodium, formaldehyde, trychloretheline, tin oxide, and polyvinyl alcohol. The department was formed in 1933 as a result of the 1930 acquisition of the Roessler & Hasslacher Chemical Company, which operated a plant in Niagara Falls, New York. The records primarily consist of reports on experimentations with various insecticides, pesticides, preservatives, and other forms of pest and disease-control applied to the farming and agricultural industries.

The Textile Fibers Department of the DuPont Company was established in 1936 (known then as the Rayon Department), which specialized in researching and developing synthetic fibers for fabrics such as Rayon, Nylon, Teflon, Corian, and Kevlar. The collection consists of research files and other records from the primary divisions of the Textile Fibers Department, including the Pioneering Research Division, Rayon Research Division, Technical Service Section, and the research facilities at the Spruance Plant in Richmond, Virginia, and at the Yerkes Plant in Buffalo, New York. These files document the development of some of DuPont's best known and most commercially successful synthetic fibers: nylon, Dacron, and Orlon. Additionally, there are market research reports assessing product performance and consumer surveys evaluating customer attitudes toward products.

This collection contains research reports for the purpose of developing and elaborating exhibits and interpretations of the Hagley Museum. The reports were prepared by a permanent research staff and by participants in the Hagley Fellowship Program. The research reports also include scholarly articles that use Hagley's collections or are about subjects that pertain to Hagley's mission.

Isaac Auerbach (1921-1992) joined the staff of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation to work on the UNIVAC project in June of 1946. One of his initial assignments was to survey and analyze the "large-scale computing projects" that were underway in the various computational laboratories throughout the country. This report goes through the history of analog computing, the development of digital computing and computational theory, current computer development projects at research institutions and commercial firms, and the commercial market for electronic digital computers.

For over fifty years the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was one of the country's leading manufacturers and vendors of radios, phonographs, televisions, and a wide array of consumer and military electronics products. The records of the RCA Corporation consist of three series: Secretary's files; B.L. Aldridge files; and the Camden Technical Library files. The collection is largely RCA technical reports, standards, engineering notebooks, manuals and miscellaneous publications. The Secretary's files document the formation of RCA. Aldridge's files deal almost entirely with the history of the Victor Talking Machine Company, RCA-Victor and the Camden Plant.