Du Pont Electronic Materials Division, Stevenage, England

A narration of the fascinating history of the Du Pont Company could almost fill volumes and it would be temptingly easy to utilise the journalistic cliché that here ‘space does not permit’ an in‐depth documentation of the company's development and multi‐faceted diversification. However, for those unaware of the origins of this giant organisation's activities, a brief summary would take us back to 1799, in the wake of the French Revolution, when a French family set sail for America on the American Eagle, with aspirations to establish a colony in Virginia. This aim did not materialise, but in 1802 one of the sons, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours, a former chemistry student of Lavoisier, formed his company on a piece of land along the banks of the Brandywine River near Wilmington, Delaware.