Everyone likes shapes, right? Things can get awful hard sometimes, so today's photo is all about nice shapes in soft, cushioned synthetic foam and rubber.
The caption that accompanies this ca. 1952 image from our DuPont Company Product Information Collection (Accession 1972.371) reads: "The chemical being poured and the foam surrounding the scientist in the Elastomers Laboratory at Chestnut Run, near Wilmington, Del., are made from DuPont's new organic isocyanates. Customers combine the isocyanates with other chemicals to produce urethane foams, which can be soft or rigid, heavy or light, and have potentialities in many industries."
In 1952, the DuPont Company organized a Product Information section within the Public Relations Department. Its main purpose was to create news releases accompanied by photographs that would be run editorially by trade journals and newspapers to create inexpensive publicity and indirect advertising.
To be used, the news releases had to include interesting information about a DuPont product, its development, manufacture, or applications. They could not be direct commercial promotions of a product itself as that would be the work of the Advertising Department. Product Information photographs and their news releases told the reader what DuPont did, why it was important, and sometimes, how it was done.
This collection has not been digitized in its entirety, but a selection of materials from it, mostly photographs taken from the 1930s through the 1950s, are available to view in our Digital Archive. Click here to take a look!