Landmark designations

The American Chemical Society designated the DuPont nylon plant at Seaford, Delaware, as a National Historic Chemical Landmark. The text of the plaque dedicated on October 26, 1995, reads:

At this site on December 15, 1939, DuPont began commercial production of nylon. Among the earliest successes of a fundamental research program novel in the American chemical industry, nylon was the first totally synthetic fiber to be fashioned into consumer products. Prepared wholly with materials readily derived from coal, air, and water, nylon has properties superior to its natural counterparts, such as silk. Nylon revolutionized the textile industry and led the way for a variety of synthetic materials that have had enormous social and economic impact on the fabric of everyday life worldwide.

Five years later, the American Chemical Society designated the establishment of modern polymer science by Wallace Carothers as a National Historic Chemical Landmark. The text of the plaque dedicated at Wilmington, Delaware, on November 17, 2000, reads:

At this site in 1928, Wallace H. Carothers (1896-1937) began his pioneering studies into the chemistry of giant molecules. He soon confirmed that high molecular weight molecules consist of repeating units of simple molecules (monomers) linked together by chemical bonds to form long chains (polymers), as first proposed in 1920 by German chemist Hermann Staudinger. Carothers excelled at creating polymers, and his work quickly led to the E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company's highly successful commercial production of neoprene, the first synthetic rubber made in the United States (1932), and nylon, the world's first totally synthetic textile fiber (1939).

back | home

Marvelous, mysterious macromolecules | Wallace Carothers | A new synthetic rubber | The "superpolymers" |
The development of nylon | Going public | An extraordinary but brief career | Landmark designations

Copyright ©2004 American Chemical Society. All Rights Reserved. 1155 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20036
202-872-4600, 800-227-5558