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 Pont’s 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 product towards sportsmen and hunters. Throughout the 1900s and 1910s, the company shifted its focus away from gunpowder production and towards 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.

A few years later the Technical Laboratory opened as part of the Dyestuffs Department, also in Deep Water Point, New Jersey. The entire Dye Works facility was renamed the Chambers Works in 1945.