DuPont |
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Official Site: DuPont.com
Wikipedia: DuPont (1802–2017) |
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History
The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's DuPont (1802–2017) page on 4 August 2019, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
DuPont was founded in 1802 by Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, using capital raised in France and gunpowder machinery imported from France. He started the company at the Eleutherian Mills, on the Brandywine Creek, near Wilmington, Delaware, two years after du Pont and his family left France to escape the French Revolution and religious persecution against Huguenot Protestants. The company began as a manufacturer of gunpowder, as du Pont noticed that the industry in North America was lagging behind Europe. The company grew quickly, and by the mid-19th century had become the largest supplier of gunpowder to the United States military, supplying half the powder used by the Union Army during the American Civil War. The Eleutherian Mills site is now a museum and a National Historic Landmark.
In 1914, Pierre S. du Pont invested in the fledgling automobile industry, buying stock in General Motors (GM). The following year he was invited to be on GM's board of directors and would eventually be appointed the company's chairman. The DuPont company would assist the struggling automobile company further with a $25 million purchase of GM stock. In 1920, Pierre S. du Pont was elected president of General Motors. Under du Pont's guidance, GM became the number one automobile company in the world. However, in 1957, because of DuPont's influence within GM, further action under the Clayton Antitrust Act forced DuPont to divest its shares of General Motors.
In February 2013, DuPont Performance Coatings was sold to the Carlyle Group and rebranded as Axalta Coating Systems.
| Date | Article | Author/Source |
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| 22 May 1919 | Du Pont to Help General Motors. | The New York Times |
| 19 December 1920 | General Motors Control Adds 67 Corporations to Du Pont Interests | Arizona Republican |
| 3 January 2013 | DuPont Performance Coatings Announces Launch of General Motors Sponsored Parts Rebate Program | DuPont |
| 16 December 2015 | DuPont Automotive Polymers Used Inside and Out of Award-Winning Vehicles | DuPont |
| 9 March 2016 | DuPont Performance Materials to showcase lightweighting and air management solutions for vehicles at VDI Congress | DuPont |
| 17 March 2016 | Resonator Made of DuPont™ Zytel® PLUS Helps Revolutionary Hybrid Sports Car Sound Good | DuPont |
| 23 June 2016 | Yazaki Names DuPont as 2016 Green Supplier of the Year | DuPont |
| 3 August 2016 | Lightweighting Remains Top Focus for Automakers to Meet CAFE Standards - from the WardsAuto Survey, Sponsored by DuPont Automotive | DuPont |
| 11 July 2018 | Former DuPont Employee Pleads Guilty to Stealing Trade Secrets and Lying to the FBI | U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Iowa |