This #WorkerWednesday, we're making a visit to the Camphor Plantof E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company's Chambers Worksfacility.
The site, located on the Delaware River in Deepwater Point, New Jersey, was established by the DuPont Company in 1892 for the purpose of manufacturing gunpowder. Between then and when it closed in 2018, the site was used to develop, manufacture, and store a wide variety of chemical products, including Kevlar, nylon, Freon, leaded gasoline, and uranium processing for the Manhattan Project.
Camphor, an aromatic compound produced from the wood of camphor producing plants, or synthetically derived from turpentine, is a versatile product used in mothballs, embalming fluids, perfumes, medicinal products and, in the early years of the plastics industry, as a plasticizer used in the manufacturing of celluloid and plastic lacquers.
This ca. 1945 photograph is part of Hagley Library's collection of DuPont Company Product Information photographs (Accession 1972.341). The DuPont Company created the Product Information section within the Public Relations department in 1952. Its function was to produce news releases with photographs about DuPont and its products for indirect publicity and advertising purposes.
This collection contains photographs of DuPont Company corporate events and proceedings, product trade shows and fairs, development and manufacturing processes, and the employees and facilities where the products were created. Most of the photographs were taken from the 1930s through the 1950s. This collection has not been digitized in its entirety, but you can view a selection of images online now. Just click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.