Word: nylons
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...Pont is now completing a new plant at Kingston, N.C. to put Dacron into mass production in 1953. The fiber may well do to wool what nylon did to silk...
...nylon, the revolution is still going on. Once Du Pont made most of its nylon components out of coal. But when coal (like wool) went soaring sky-high in price, Du Pont built a huge plant on Texas' Sabine River, started making the raw materials from natural gas four years ago. This week Du Pont is opening a similar plant at Victoria, Texas...
Even while Du Pont expanded its nylon production, it built a $17 million plant at Camden, S.C. whose product may partially eclipse nylon itself. This fiber is Orion, a cousin of nylon but far stronger, more resistant to sunlight. The U.S. textile industry is already using it in men's summer suits and spun hose, women's dresses, auto tops and a wealth of new decorator fabrics. (But Du Pont will get stiff competition from Union Carbide's Dynel, an Orion-type fiber...
...plowing tremendous sums into research, thus obtain enough new products to spark its sales as old markets decline. It spent $38 million on research last year, will dedicate a new $30 million research center at Wilmington next month. "It took us ten years and $27 million to bring nylon to the production stage," says Greenewalt. "But for every nylon that hits the jackpot, there are 20 other gambles that fail to pay off. If we could not afford to carry the 19 failures, we would probably miss the nylon...
...Pont could not afford the risk if it did not keep the most rigorous control on where the research dollars go. It spends only 15% to 20% of its research budget on fundamental (i.e., "pure") research which, while unpredictable, is also productive of the biggest strikes (e.g., nylon). It concentrates most heavily on applied research - the further development of processes already known - which have now brought Orion out of the same test tubes where nylon was found. The greatest problem, says Greenewalt, is to be patient enough to carry a seemingly losing proposition for five or six years...