Hercules Inc.
Hercules, Inc., was a chemical and munitions manufacturing company based in Wilmington, Delaware, which was formed as the Hercules Powder Company. Hercules Powder Company was formed in 1882 by DuPont and Laflin & Rand Powder Company to finance construction of a dynamite plant on land adjacent to San Francisco Bay owned by DuPont subsidiary California Powder Works. Hercules Powder Company was founded by T.W. Bacchus in 1912 as a gun powder company and sold for $10 Million in 1914. Hercules was a spun-off from DuPont as a result of U.S. federal government actions in the field of antitrusts. Hercules, Inc., operated under this name until 2008, when it was merged into Ashland Inc.
Hercules, Inc., was one of the major producers of smokeless powder for warfare in the United States during the 20th century. At the time of its spin-off, the DuPont Corp. retained the processes and patents for the production of "single-base" nitrocellulose gunpowders, whereas Hercules, Inc., was given the patents and processes for the production of "double-base" gunpowders that combined nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine.
Read more about Hercules Inc.: Solid-fuel Rocket Motor Production, Commercial Gunpowders, History
Famous quotes containing the word hercules:
“I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)