Nylon and Bombs, How DuPont Made Nylon and Nukes in the mid 20th Century

I wrote this article eleven years ago and it is now behind a pay wall.  I had not shared it back then. The book is very good and tells a fascinating tale of how DuPont Corp. got so deeply involved in creating America's nuclear arsenal.

BRIGITTE VAN TIGGELEN AND NEIL GUSSMAN

Technology in Translation

The story of DuPont, first in French, then in English.

Translation is not a transfer of meaning from one language to another, but a dialogue between two languages. —Richard Pevear

People of every nation are learning English. The language of the once-global island empire and its former colonies has conquered the worlds of technology, commerce, and popular culture. Bankers, pilots, commodity traders, film stars, and ship's captains have to know the language of Shakespeare, Lincoln, Churchill, and Yogi Berra. But the conquest is not complete. History, literature, and lab reports still first appear in French, Russian, German, Mandarin, Japanese, Serbo-Croat, Greek, and Hebrew. Authors who want their books and research to reach a global audience will eventually have to translate those results into English. Right at the moment when a scholar who writes in French or Farsi wants to reach the world, a long negotiation begins. For the French author of a recent history of DuPont and chemical engineering, that negotiation led to a book in English very different from the original in French.

We all know that some names and some subjects simply sell books. The reverse can also be true. Certain words can cut the sales of a book. Have you ever read a popular book on science that included differential equation in its title? For those few of you who have searched Amazon or your local bookstore for a page-turner on pipes and valves, the words "chemical engineering" do not appear in the titles of books on the popular science shelves. The 24 books Amazon.com lists from the search string "chemical engineering" include only handbooks and textbooks.

In fact, the publishing history on both sides of the Atlantic of a recent book on the history of chemical engineering at DuPont shows that those who market books believe "chemical engineering" in the title will kill a book's sales. The book, published in English in December of 2006, is titled Nylon and Bombs: DuPont and the March of Modern America. First published in French in 2001, it is a solid, well-documented account of the rise of chemical engineering at DuPont. The author, Pap Ndiaye, shows how, beginning early in the 20th century, DuPont evolved from an artisan company with long apprenticeships in its factories to an engineering company living by the slide rule. Ndiaye gives the reader both the American and global context of the rise of chemical engineering as a profession.

If you are thinking a book like this should have a title such as Formula for Success: How Chemical Engineering Changed DuPont and the Chemical Enterprise, you would agree with the author but not with his publisher. Ndiaye had a working title that included the words "chemical engineering," but his French publisher convinced him to accept a more provocative title. The title of the French edition is Du nylon et des bombes: Du Pont de Nemours, le marché et l'État américain, 1900-1970. Translated literally, the title is Nylon and Bombs: DuPont de Nemours, the Market, and the American State. To complete the sales pitch, the black-and-white cover of the French edition features a photo from the late 1930s showing a group of pretty young women in nylons. Actually une bombe (feminine) in French is best translated as "sex bomb" in English: with pretty women in nylons in the picture, you have both kinds of bombs in the DuPont arsenal. The more sterile, stylized American cover uses bold colors and a collage not open to the charge of sexism.

The American edition retained the eye-catching title but made a subtle change in the subtitle that looks like a mistake. In French the masculine noun marché means "market." Drop the accent on the final "e" and the feminine noun marche has the meaning "walk, step, or march." Did Johns Hopkins University Press make an error, or see the switch of genders as an interesting pun? We?ll probably never know. When asked, the author was silent on the subject. The word "March" adds a military connotation in the English subtitle that is different from the French version, but since the main title is "Nylon and Bombs" it is a change in emphasis that the content allows.

Those who can read the book in both languages will find that the differences go well beyond the cover. The book is longer in French by almost a third. The main reason is cultural. This project represents years of study by Ndiaye at the Hagley Museum, keeper of many DuPont archives. It is his doctoral thesis edited for publication. In France, people buy and read doctoral theses on subjects they find interesting: you can find a Parisian reading a published thesis in history at her local café. Writing standards are very high in France, where a dissertation is expected to be readable and enjoyable as well as scholarly.

The American version is shorter in part because the publisher omitted the first chapter of the French edition, putting some of the information from it in the other six chapters and the balance in a "Note on Historiography" at the back of the book. American readers want to jump right into the narrative. But even apart from this editorial decision, Ndiaye says, the style of the American edition is very different from that of the original French.

This isn't surprising. French writers in general use longer sentences than their English-language counterparts. Moreover, the logical structure of the argument is carefully embedded in the French, whereas in English it is more often implied than made explicit. At the same time, however, the French also love playing with connotation and multiple layers of meaning. This is clear, for instance, in the very first pages of the introduction to the French edition, where a lyrical paragraph becomes almost an ode to nylon. A sentence that begins with an alliterative list of adjectives is cut in two in English, ending with an assertion of nylon's central place in Western culture in the past half century. In this sentence, the author uses the French verb tramer, which means to weave, to plot, and to engineer: a perfect word to express the cultural meaning of this man-made textile. The English passage sounds dull by comparison: "Nylon revolutionized the textile industry. It led to the creation of plastics, and became a part of our culture." Much of the fun with the language that can be found even in a French PhD thesis has disappeared from the English version of the book. But on the other hand, in several places the narrative has been clarified.

Did the well-told story in French survive in English? The short answer is yes. This year DuPont Corporation is five years into its third century. Founded in 1803, the company still bears the name of the French égré who founded it. And the oldest industrial company in America is well into another centennial transformation. In 2007, DuPont sold its last carpet fiber business, having already moved out of nuclear power engineering a good while before. DuPont is now a chemical company that pins much of its hope for the future on its stake in the rapidly growing biotech industry.

The company that E. I. DuPont founded shortly after America itself became a nation made gunpowder. In its first century of operation, DuPont plants had an enviable safety record with artisan skills passed from operator to operator. DuPont made explosives using processes and expertise learned on the job and passed through shop apprenticeship. DuPont's commitment to safety is legendary. The owner and the workers lived next to the DuPont plant. Clearly the incentives for strict attention to safety were high.

When the profession of chemical engineering was born in the late 1800s, DuPont at first had no place for these new mavens of analysis. As the 20th century dawned, DuPont continued in its traditional powder-making business, but began to see promise in new processes and started a transformation that, by midcentury, made DuPont the leading employer of chemical engineers in America. In the 1950s, one in every ten chemical engineers in the United States worked for DuPont.

In 1903, DuPont kicked off its second century by opening the Experimental Station in Wilmington. The company planned to diversify into new markets away from their central explosives business. In 1904, DuPont entered the lacquers business; 1910 saw a foray into the synthetic leather market. In 1911, diversification plans got a boost when DuPont was forced to sell some of its explosive production assets. DuPont was so dominant in the gunpowder market that the (Teddy) Roosevelt Administration decided DuPont was a monopoly. From the divested factories, the Hercules and Atlas corporations were formed.

At the same time DuPont was changing, chemical engineers were banding together to form a professional organization. Established in 1908, the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) announced to the world that chemical engineering was joining mechanical and electrical engineering as a professional discipline. But respect and equality with sister professions would come only slowly. Electrical engineers were a category in the U.S. census beginning in 1910. Chemical engineers were not listed as a profession until 1940. Until that time, chemical engineering was a subcategory of mechanical engineering. And the founding of the AIChE was not without detractors. The American Chemical Society (ACS, founded 1876) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, founded 1880) both opposed recognition of chemical engineering as a profession. But AIChE came into being despite opposition and grew slowly until chemical engineering employment both at DuPont and across America took off in the 1920s.

During this period, the DuPont commitment to engineering would grow as the company invested in ammonia production. While the main ingredient was free—nitrogen in the air—making ammonia required an enormous capital outlay. And though DuPont had some success increasing the ammonia business, high-pressure chemistry and ammonia were a drain on profits. With the Depression of the early 1930s, the ammonia operation struggled further. Then Wallace Carothers invented nylon. Large-scale manufacture of this new synthetic fiber required high-pressure precursors: hexanoic acid and haxamethylene diamine. Suddenly ammonia and high-pressure chemistry were vital to a fast growing market, and the long DuPont commitment to ammonia and high-pressure chemistry payed off in a big way.

Nylon took the fibers market by storm in the late 1930s, but far more ominous clouds gathered over the rest of the world. When the United States formally entered World War II in December 1941, DuPont was one of only a few chemical companies building its own plants, a major reason the Delaware-based manufacturer was chosen as the lead contractor for production of the atomic bomb. Ndiaye tells this story in considerable detail. He says that although the physicists were in charge at the beginning of the project, eventually their calculations had to be fleshed out in an actual production facility, and DuPont-led engineers took control. As Ndiaye observes, the engineers possessed "a thorough understanding of the blueprint, its special language, and the changes it called for. Here the translator has a strategic position: the apparent modesty of his role in reality conceals a transfer of power from the 'theoreticians' to the 'practitioners.'" Chemical engineers turned the ideas of the physicists into reality.

Nylon and Bombs continues the story of DuPont through its heyday in the 1950s into the early 1970s, when changes in the public perception of chemistry—in part resulting from environmental concerns and anti-war sentiment—damaged the image of the chemical enterprise. Nuclear power, which flourished in France, was increasingly on the defensive in the United States. Why the stark difference between the two countries? Not only words but also ways of seeing the world require translation, a risky but indispensable enterprise.

Brigitte Van Tiggelen is on the faculty of the Université catholique de Louvain and is the president of Mémosciences.
Neil Gussman is communications manager for the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Meditation and Military Thinking

One of the very odd things about beginning meditation and yoga late in life is how they both tie back into and touch the life I lived before. 

Both practices are concerned with inner peace, which would not seem to connect with either my years as a soldier or my years as a competitor. 

But in the last year, the connections pop up in my practice of meditation and yoga, and I smile. 

In my beginner yoga classes we did several balance poses: tree, airplane, and others.  The key to doing these well is Drishti: focusing on a single point throughout the pose. 

No problem for me.  From bike racing, when I am climbing a long hill needing to maintain 95% of max heart rate, but not more, I focus on a point as high as I can see on the climb. I am going there. All of my effort is to get there, as smoothly as I can.

From firing a rifle, being able to focus, to be firmly grounded, my breath in control, is Drishti and puts me on target. 

Today's meditation was on attention and awareness.  Awareness is being able to perceive what is in my environment. Attention is focusing on one particular thing in my environment, even for a moment.  When I am on guard or security duty, I maintain awareness of the area around me with all my senses. When I sense something that is a threat or out of place, I put all my attention on that spot, even for a moment. 

Two people read the same book, watch the same movie, walk the same street and have a very different experience.  Meditation and yoga give me a peaceful perception of some very hostile environments from my life. And I feel joy.

The Funeral Oration of Pericles

I am re-reading Pericles in a book titled "How to Think About War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy."

There is more to the book than the "Funeral Oration of Pericles" but re-reading that speech made me aware, yet again, of what it means to be a patriot.

Some excerpts:

Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens, and the living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit, although they may pray for a less fatal issue. The value of such a spirit is not to be expressed in words. Any one can discourse to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defense, which you know already. 

[They] freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present.  The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all tombs, I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, written not on stone but in the hearts of men. 

Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness. 

To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster coming together are far more bitter than death striking him unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the general hope.

To you who are the sons and brothers of the departed, I see that the struggle to emulate them will be an arduous one. For all men praise the dead, and, however preeminent your virtue may be, I do not say even to approach them, and avoid living their rivals and detractors, but when a man is out of the way, the honor and goodwill which he receives is unalloyed. 

For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart.

Chinook Helicopter Lifting a 105mm Howitzer, Part 2

Seven more views of lifting a 105mm howitzer with a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

A Chinook Helicopter Lifting a 105mm Howitzer, Part 1

This sequence is the end of the process. I will post some more with details of the hook up. Photos were taken at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa.

 Hanging on the bottom of the forward door guiding the pilot.

The Price of Leadership: An excerpt from "Master and Commander"

In Patrick O’Brian’s book“Master and Commander” the sixth chapter begins with the ship’s doctor on land thinking about how men age.  After college, in my early 30s, I decided that the price of taking power was far too high, so I determined to be a journeyman at writing rather than a leader.  Dr. Mathurin’s reflections fit my own experience and make me glad of my choice.  Mathurin is thinking about what happens to men as they age and become absorbed by their profession and set on a path by the cumulative effect of their choices. He sees middle age, around 40, as where the line is crossed and is talking specifically about a mid-career Lieutenant, James Dillon:

“It appears to me a critical time for him…a time that will settle him in that particular course he will never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life.  It has often seemed to me that towards this period [middle age] … men strike out their permanent characters; or have those characters struck into them. Merriment, roaring high spirits before this: then some chance concatenation, or some hidden predilection (or rather inherent bias) working through, and the man is in the road he cannot leave but must go on, making it deeper and deeper (a groove or channel), until he is lost in his mere character—persona—no longer human, but an accretion of qualities belonging to this character.  

James Dillon was a delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd—will I say hear-breaking?—how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is the great enemy—the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. The senior post-captains here…Shriveled men (shriveled in essence: not, alas, in belly). Pomp, an unwholesome diet…pleasure…at too high a price, like lying with a peppered paramour. Yet Lord Nelson, by (Captain) Jack Aubrey’s account, is as direct and unaffected and amiable a man as could be wished. So, indeed, in most ways is Jack Aubrey himself; though a certain careless arrogancy of power appears at times. His cheerfulness at all events is still with him.  

How long will it last? What woman, political cause, disappointment, wound, disease, untoward child, defeat, what strange surprising accident will take it all away? But I am concerned for James Dillon: he is as mercurial as he ever was—moreso—only now it is all ten octaves lower and in a darker key; and sometimes I am afraid in a black humour he will do himself a mischief. – page 202-3.

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Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman: War and Peace set in the 20th Century

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“Stalingrad” by Vasily Grossman opens with the sentence:

“On 29 April 1942 Benito Mussolini’s train pulled into Salzburg station, now hung with both Italian and German flags.”

In the first two chapters of this thousand-page novel are a description of a meeting between Adolph Hitler and the Italian fascist dictator. Mussolini is the older of the two, but the junior partner. Mussolini notes the signs of age and exhaustion in the 53-year-old Hitler. Hitler notes the decline in square-jawed Italian who is approaching his 60^th year.

Hitler describes his plans for a post-war Nazi-dominated Europe.  As he does, Mussolini sees Hitler as vain and stupid. Mussolini knows he is the smarter of the two, but Hitler has such overwhelming numbers in men and machines, that he can only accept his role as the junior partner. 

Hitler believes one great thrust into Russia will put him in control of all of Europe. Britain will capitulate, America will stay away, and he will be able to concentrate on the new world he created. 

Nothing turned out as Hitler planned.

Grossman is a wonderful storyteller.  This novel in two volumes is nearly 2,000 pages, “War and Peace” set in the 20^th Century centered on Stalingrad.  I read second volume “Life and Fate” in 2015.  The first volume was just published in English translation. 

Grossman was a Russian war correspondent throughout the Second World War. Russians everywhere read his dispatches from the front. 

That storytelling ability pulls the reader in, keeping the vast tale personal and close.  After showing the plans of Hitler through the jealous eyes of Mussolini, the next few chapters follow Vavilov, a father in his forties who gets a notice to report for military service the next morning. His son is already in the Army. Vavilov looks with love around his hut and does what he can to make sure his wife and family can survive the next winter without him.

Next we are at a dinner party in Stalingrad. The Nazi armies are still far off, but relentlessly advancing.  The group of professional workers, engineers, doctors, academics, speculate about what will happen to Stalingrad, to Russia, to themselves. 

Then we switch again to following a woman who is an industrial chemist checking for pollution in Soviet factories.  Just Tolstoy moved from ordinary life to war and back, Grossman draws a panorama of the battle for Stalingrad.

At the center of the story is the first mass attack on the city by the Nazis which begins with hundreds of bombers dropping more than a thousand tons of bombs, including fire bombs on the city.  Before I read the book, I thought mass fire-bombing raids began with the British attack on Hamburg.  The Germans turned Stalingrad into an inferno, incinerating thousands who were not killed by high explosives.

As the German ground attack nears the Volga River on the east side of the city and looks as if it will crush all resistance.  The Russians stop the Germans and counterattack. One of the long sad stories within the novel follows one battalion holding back a German attack to the last defender. 

I loved “Life and Fate” and hope to re-read it next year, now that I have finished the fist volume of this 1,800-page tale of the battle that was the beginning of the end of the Nazi attack on Russia.