In February of 1935 Gerard Berchet had been assigned to make a series of polyamides. In all, 81 different polyamides were prepared and tested. But it was the polymer that Berchet prepared on February 28 that would change the world. That polymer was polyamide 6-6.

          Unlike earlier polyamides, this one was made from cheap and easily availible starting materials. Wallace Carothers thought polyamide 5-10 was a better material and more interesting scientifically. But polyamide 5-10 was expensive to make. Polyamide 6-6 was made from monomers easily made from benzene, which was in turn easily obtained from coal tar. Carothers was overruled by his boss, Elmer K. Bolton. Bolton made the decision that polyamide 6-6 was going to be the material that DuPont would produce. All effort was now focused on designing methods and machinery to make polyamide 6-6, which was referred to as "fiber 66" by the scientists at "Purity Hall", and would soon become known as nylon.

          "There were two kinds of Ph.D.s, two kinds of people working on nylon 66. The first were the gentlemen, Purity Hall scientists who discovered nylon - Drs. Carothers, [Julian] Hill, Berchet, [Wesley] Peterson, [Donald] Coffman, [Paul] Flory, [Edgar] Spanagel. 'Ariels' I called them. They were the philosophers. They were the elite academic professors.

          "The second kind were those who made nylon commercial. [George] Graves, [Dale] Babcock, [Winfield] Heckert, [Ernest] Gladding, [George Preston] Hoff, [Donald] Hull, [Elmer] Bolton, [Amby] Staudt, [Bill] Wood, etc. I called them 'Calibans'."

          -Joe Labovsky

          This is the point where the story of nylon diverges from the story of Wallace Carothers. Carothers was a scientist, not an engineer. Devising a means of producing his inventions commercially was not what interested him. The nylon project came under the supervision of George Graves. Carothers, meanwhile, spent more time working with Paul J. Flory on the theoretical aspects of step-growth polymerization and the behavior of polymers. But people like Carothers and Flory, who loved fundamental research best, would be out of place in the push to make nylon a commercial reality.

          After the death of Wallace Carothers on 29 April 1937, pure science would end altogether at the Experimental Station. Most of the "Ariels" were soon gone from the Experimental Station as well, transferring to other positions at DuPont. Flory, the most academic of the Purity Hall chemists, left DuPont altogether in 1938 for a university position.

          Meanwhile, the race was on to bring nylon to market. The work of the "Calibans" had just begun.

         

          References

          1. Labovsky, Joseph. Oral history by John K. Smith, 24 July 1996. Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation.

          2. Hermes, Matthew. Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon. Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society; Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1996.

          3. Labovsky, Joseph. Research Notebook 2286, archives, DuPont Experimental Station, Wilmington, DE.

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