Wallace Carothers came to DuPont in 1928 with the plan of proving Hermann Staudinger's macromolecular theory, which proposed the existence of giant macromolecules containing many thousands of atoms. He planned to do this by preparing macromolecules in the laboratory. He planned to use a scheme he had devised which we now call step-growth polymerization, in which many smaller molecules would be chemically joined together end-to-end in long chains to create macromolecules. He first instructed his scientists to make materials we now call polyesters. His goal was to break the record for the highest molecular weight ever for a synthetic compound. That record was then held by Emil Fischer for his synthetic polypeptide with a molecular weight of 4021.

But polyesters didn't come easily. Water is a byproduct of the reaction which makes polyesters, and it also hinders the reaction. In 1930 one scientist working for Carothers named Julian Hill came up with the clever idea of carrying out the reaction under high vacuum in a contraption called a molecular still. Under vacuum all water would evaporate, removing it from the reaction. Hill was successful and soon made polyesters with molecular weights of 12,000, shattering the old record.