In 1926 Charles M. A. Stine was the head of DuPont’s research laboratory. He begun his work at DuPont in 1907. He establishing the Organic Chemicals Division in 1916 and he ascended to lead the DuPont Chemical Department in 1923. Stine’s desired approach was to create a laboratory that concentrated on fundamental research. He defined his approach as “fundamental” because he recognized that calling his new industrial research laboratory a “pure” research facility would not sit well with the other lab heads whose facilities were tied intimately to manufacturing departments. Stine argued that once chemists and researchers had arrived at a fundamental understanding of the chemical processes used in many of DuPont’s existing products- cellophane, plastics, rayon and paints- then manufacturing efficiency would increase as well as the prestige of DuPont for its scientific contributions.
In 1927 DuPont allocated $300,000 a year for the new laboratory. The new laboratory quickly became known as Purity Hall. Armed with a new lab and a substantial budget Stine set out to recruit established academics. Stine soon found that he couldn’t attract established chemists away from their academic nests so he pursued younger, unrecognized talent. He managed to attract promising young scientists. Among them he found a chemist at Harvard to whom he promised the opportunity to conduct pure research in the field of polymers. Wallace Carothers was hesitant to enter industry because he was prone to spells of diminished capacity. The offer proved to be compelling enough to lure Carothers away from his instructor position at Harvard. Carothers was put in charge of the division and within a short amount of time he had published a number of papers that set the terms for polymer research and condensation polymerization, and, in so doing, he demystified the large molecule.
By 1930 Carothers’s team had discovered the first completely synthetic rubber, neoprene, and they had synthesized the precursor of nylon when they created the first polyester superpolymer. It would take DuPont ten years to develop neoprene into a profitable product, though Carothers became a leader in polymer chemistry after publishing papers detailing the discovery. In that duration of time Stine had moved upward in the management of the company and Carothers found himself under the control of management that wanted less theoretically based research and more research that was directed toward the commercial interests of the company.
The change of objectives at Purity Hall led to Carothers’s deep disappointment. But by 1933 he had been persuaded to renew his work on synthetic fibers. In 1934 Carothers’s lab created the first polyamide fiber. The company patented the fiber as nylon. The first nylon product was a toothbrush filament that was introduced in 1938. The product list grew quickly. By 1939 nylon was exhibited in its most recognizable form at the San Francisco Exposition, and, of course, the exhibit was nylon stockings.
Carothers would not live to see the development of his creation. He sank into depression and committed suicide in 1937 by ingesting cyanide. He was 41 years old.