Word: du
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Mass production began this month at a new plant in Old Hickory, Tenn., and Du Pont is also building a factory in Belgium to produce Corfam for the European market. Barbed-wire fences and 24-hour guards at Old Hickory testify to Du Pont's unwillingness to share its hard-won secrets with a dozen competitors that are trying to crack the synthetic-leather market. Not even the shoemakers have been allowed inside the production area, and a sign at Old Hickory announces: "Our competitor is a nice fellow-smart too-so let him figure...
Packaging Revolution. This continuous search for products-and the tendency of one link in the chain of discovery to lead inexorably to another -runs through Du Pont's entire history and legend. Founded in 1802 by Eleuthere Irenee Du Pont, a French immigrant who had studied gunpowder-making under Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, the company got its start by selling explosives to a young U.S. that needed them to clear the West and defend itself. It grew huge a century later by supplying 40% of the powder used by the Allies in World...
...1920s the company moved to less martial fields by buying the French-owned rights to a transparent cellulose thought to be of small value because it broke up in water; Du Pont found a way to waterproof it, called it Cellophane and revolutionized packaging. Du Font's growing group of scientists followed up with a series of breakthroughs: the first commercial U.S. synthetic rubber, the first nitrogen synthetic fertilizer, and the first synthetic fiber -nylon, which now comes in 450 varieties and rings up some $500 million in yearly sales for the company...
...Skin a Rabbit. Almost alone among the chiefs of billion-dollar corporations, most of whom come from middle-class backgrounds, the man who has inherited this tradition was born to great wealth. Mother Copeland was a millionairess, father was a high officer of Du Pont for 40 years, and Lammot Copeland's playmates were mostly his moneyed cousins. From the start, he showed a flair for discovering short cuts. At ten, he entered a family contest in biology in which the little Du Ponts competed to be the first to find and assemble from the Delaware countryside the bones...
...orders, but was laid off when the Depression struck. Back in the company after only four months, he began to rise with predictable speed: board member at the age of 37, then corporate secretary, chairman of the finance committee, vice president. In 1962 Crawford Greenewalt-whose wife is a Du Pont and a first cousin of Copeland's-moved to the chairmanship after 14 years as president. He advised the board that the best man to succeed him would be Copeland. Somewhat like Britain's Conservative Party, Du Pont's 30 directors seek instinctively to pick...