The artificial fibers research program took place at DuPont's Experimental Research Station in Wilmington, Delaware, where the researchers spent nearly a decade testing materials and spinning processes. Their first experiments in the late 1920s and early 1930s had suggested that polymers might become the building blocks for an entirely new kind of fiber. After experimenting briefly with caprolactam (which they could not get to polymerize at that time) and polyester based fibers (which could not withstand the heat of boiling water and were therefore neither washable nor ironable), they turned their attention to another class of chemicals, polyamides.
Pages from one of Carothers' lab
notebooks
First nitrogen gas pressure
spinner and windup
Model of the 1935 spinning machine
Early glass cell for polyamide
preparation in solution
Julian Hill reenacting the
discovery of cold drawing
Carothers in his DuPont lab
Carothers seated in a laboratory at
DuPont with apparatus
Joe Labovsky in the Experimental
Station 66 lab
Nylon Announced, October 1938
Melt Viscometer
P. J. Flory to Helen Carothers
Wallace Carothers to C. M. A.
Stine
Polyamide Fibers: The Mechanism of
Polyamide Formation
'Review of the Catalysis of
Polymerization'
The Lavoisier Medal for Technical
Achievement, 1990
The Perkin Medal
Offspring products of Nylon
Research
