The story of the DuPont Experimental Station, the Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb

The Experimental Station, DuPont’s massive research and development lab in Wilmington that now houses the Delaware Innovation Space, has been the home of many inventions over the years, from nylon to Teflon to ink jet technology. The company has had its share of infamy, but few points in its history are as controversial as the ones that relate to war.

During the Civil War, DuPont’s Brandywine River Mill (now part of Hagley Museum) produced about a third of the gunpowder for the Union, according to the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. During World War I, the company expanded to provide gunpowder to the Allies in quantities so great it was charged with war profiteering in 1934 by the Senate Munitions Investigating Committee — a charge it denied, in an 18-month investigation that would eventually end without closure.

Then, in World War II, DuPont designed, constructed and operated a plutonium plant for the Manhattan Project, helping produce the first atomic bombs, which would be used in Allied attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Want to learn more? Lucas S. Clawson, a Hagley historian, will be giving a talk on DuPont and The Manhattan Project at the Delaware Public Archives in Dover on Aug. 3 at 10:30 a.m.

Find more info here.