Abstract:

Charles H. DeMirjian (1925-) was a packaging design manager with E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. Accompanied by creative marketing with the assistance of DeMirjian and his team, DuPont launched the largest advertising and promotion campaign in the history of the carpeting industry. This collection consists of materials related to the marketing and success of DuPont STAINMASTER® carpet fiber.

Scope and Contents: The Commercials series consists of DuPont Company commercials for more than fifty DuPont products. The products most heavily represented are Teflon cookware, Silverstone cookware, Lucite Paints, Rally Car Wax, medical products, and agrichemicals. Medical products include the Automatic Clinical Analyzer, Diamond Knife, Luminescence Biometer, mammography, mass spectrometer, overdose antidote, Teflon voice boxes, Thallium heart attack prevention, and X-ray subtraction. Commercials on agrichemicals cover DuPont research, crop protection, agrochemical testing, Extrazine II herbicide, Krovar herbicide, nitrogen fixation studies of soybeans, and pesticides. There are several commercials related to DuPont safety measures taken at plants to ensure workplace safety, as well as the safe transportation of chemicals, double wall oil tankers for marine life, and noise and vibration reduction. There are also several commercials related to DuPont programs for alcohol rehabilitation, energy conservation, personal safety program for rape prevention, and job training programs for inmate rehabilitation. Commercials for DuPont’s man-made fibers include Coolmax, Kevlar, Lycra, Tyvek, and Nomex fire retardant suits. The automobile products represented in this series are for Gas Booster, Exhaust Manifold Reactor, Nomex filter bags, Refinish, safety auto glass, and Zerex Antifreeze. One of DuPont’s marketing campaigns used the tagline “There's A Lot of Good Chemistry Between Us.” These commercials generally feature a narrator having a conversation with one or more people in a particular situation being informed about how a DuPont invention impacts their life without them even being aware of it. The commercial generally does not focus on a single product, but rather on a single material that is used in a variety of products. For example, in one commercial, a family is walking through their new home while it is under construction and the narrator is explaining to them how Methanol is used to make various parts of their home. Another advertising campaign termed “The Originators” commercials, again does not focus on a particular product, but rather on a significant contribution DuPont scientists have made through research in a particular area. Each commercial features a DuPont scientist talking about their research area. For example, one commercial features Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar, discussing all the different uses of the synthetic material. ...

Abstract:

Harry J. Haon II (1901-1989) and his son Harry J. Haon III (1934-2013) were chemists and lifetime employees of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and both came to specialize in sales and marketing. The Harry J. Haon family papers are a collection of correspondence, meeting notes/minutes, drawings/maps, journal articles, DuPont publications, papers expressing once classified information about DuPont products, as well as teaching materials for employees who were novice marketing managers, sales personnel and employees in leadership positions. The collection is composed of two series consisting of the papers of Harry J. Haon, II and Harry J. Haon, III. The careers in DuPont of both Haons are well documented.

Abstract:

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.