Du Pont, Pierre

INSERM E9910, Institut Claudius Regaud, 20 rue du Pont St Pierre, 31052 Toulouse, France... 

Information on Du Pont before World War n comes from Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Stephen Salisbury, Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modem Corporation (New York Harper Row, 1971). Du Pont is also reviewed in three Chandler works Strategy and Structure Chapters in the History of American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA MIT Press, 1962) The Visible Hand The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1977) and Scale and Scope The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1990). 

E. Russell, War and Nature Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 17-20 Chandler and Salsbury, Pierre S. du Pont, pp. 359—389. 

Smith, Silk Purses into Sows Ears Chandler and Salisbury, Pierre S. du Pont, chaps. 6 and 8. 

Enter Pierre du Pont and his son Eleuthere Irenee who will later find a small measure of success with a start-up chemical company in wild and remote Delaware. Pierre is dashing and ebullient. Antoine is analytical and totally devoted to his beakers, flasks, and balances. Pierre and Marie begin an affair starting in 1781 that will last over 10 years without damaging the friendship between Pierre and Antoine (or, for that matter, Marie and Antoine)—ah, the French. From a scene ... 

In the 1890 s Pierre S. Du Pont undertook to perfect another new explosive, smokeless powder, based on nitrocellulose. This development presaged a turning point in the company s history because interest was generated quickly in the many chemical possibilities presented by the raw material cellulose. 

The first big order — eight million pounds of cannon powder for France — was nearly equal to the company s annual capacity. Pierre du Pont, however, saw war orders as more a risk than an opportunity. Everyone expected a short war, similar to the Franco-Prussian conflict of 1870. The cessation of hostilities would inevitably lead to abrupt cancellation of munitions contracts, as had happened to DuPont in the Spanish-American War. Pierre decided that to reduce DuPont s financial risk, the capital to build new plants would have to be paid for by the Allies, and that the plants would have to be amortized immediately. Thus, when the war ended, DuPont would have no worthless investment on its books. 

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Stephen Salsbury, Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modem Corporation (New York Harper Row, 1971), 364. 

Four chapters on other operational substructure search systems follow. Jean Marcah and co-workers describe the Du Pont global technical information system Steve Welford and Clemens Jochum report on chemical structure registration for Beilstein Online Peter Rusch also covers Beilstein Onhne in a paper about substructure searching on Dialog and the DARC Toolkit which was described by Pascal Huguet is summarised in a chapter written by Bill Town with some suggestions from myself and Pierre Buffet of Questel. 

Du Pont and the other makers of gunpowder and explosives formed a trust in the early 1870s that lasted until 1904. Hounshell and Smith, Science and Corporate Strategy Du Pont R D, 1902-1980, 11-13. The new generation of du Fonts is discussed in Chandler and Salsbury, Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation, Chandler, Strategy and Structure, 52-67 Dyer and Sicilia, Labors of a Modern Hercules Evolution of a Chemical Company, 33-41 Taylor and Sudnik, Du Pont and the International Chemical Industry, 22-25, 30-34. 

DuPont, Pierre Samuel (1870-1954) An American chemist and industrialist who worked for the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, and becoming its president from 1915 to 1920. He is noted for transforming the American explosives producer into the well-known diversified chemical producer. 

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