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Overview

As the DuPont Company expanded beyond black powder into dynamite production at the end of the 19th century, it recognized the need for a full-time research facility dedicated to studying and improving explosives. In July 1902 it opened the Eastern Laboratory at its Repauno dynamite plant in Gibbstown, New Jersey, and appointed Charles Reese as its first director. The lab was named for the Eastern Dynamite Company, then a holding company for DuPont's dynamite businesses, and employed 10 researchers. It was DuPont's first formally organized laboratory, and was the first industrial chemical research lab established in the United States. DuPont's opening of another research lab, the Experimental Station, in the following year (1903) helped define the company's dual approach to research: applied research aimed directly at new or improved products, such as Eastern conducted, and the Experimental Station's basic or fundamental research aimed at new knowledge.

In 1907 Eastern Lab developed the first successful low-freezing dynamites, as well as a number of permissibles, explosives approved for use in gaseous and dusty mines. During World War I, Eastern conducted DuPont's initial efforts to research and produce dyes in order to replace German imports cut off by the British naval blockade. In 1918 dyestuffs research moved into the company's new Jackson Lab at Deepwater, New Jersey, and Eastern concentrated on explosives research for the war effort. After World War I, Eastern's research diversified beyond explosives into such areas as developing effective process technology for tetraethyl lead gasoline additives, and improving DuPont's many chemical manufacturing operations. Eastern also helped develop ingredients and processes for making Dacron® polyester in the 1950s.

By its 50th anniversary in 1952 Eastern had grown to 100 separate buildings on a 300-acre site. After DuPont discontinued dynamite production at Repauno in 1954, Eastern Lab researchers developed high-pressure technologies for making industrial diamonds from graphite, and for bonding metals such as the copper-cupronickel slab from which the first U.S. dime and quarter sandwich coins were made. DuPont phased out the Eastern Lab in 1972, and its operations and personnel were transferred to other company facilities.

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