History
A special formulation of dynamite was patented in 1874 by J.W. Willard, superintendent of the California Powder Works in Santa Cruz, California. He called his invention "Hercules powder",[7] a competitive jab at rival Giant Powder Company which had acquired the exclusive U.S. rights to Alfred Nobel's original dynamite formula. The mythological Hercules was known as a giant slayer.
The California Powder Works became the only manufacturer of Hercules powder. In 1877, J.W. Willard moved to Cleveland, Ohio to oversee the opening of a new California Powder Works plant there, dedicated to the manufacture of Hercules powder.[8] In 1881, the California Powder Works moved its Hercules powder manufacturing in California to a new site along the northeast shore of San Francisco Bay. The company town that grew up around the facility became known as "Hercules", later (1900) incorporated as Hercules, California.
In 1882, thanks to their interlocking ownership interests with the California Powder Works by that time, the DuPont corporation and Laflin & Rand Powder Company acquired the rights to manufacture Hercules powder and incorporated the Hercules Powder Company for that purpose. In 1904, Du Pont dissolved the company as part of its ongoing effort to consolidate the many explosives manufacturers that it controlled under the Du Pont name.
In 1911, the United States won a lawsuit that it had brought against the Du Pont corporation under the Sherman Antitrust Act.[9] The U.S. Circuit Court in Delaware found that Du Pont had been operating an unlawful monopoly, and ordered a breakup of its explosives and gunpowder manufacturing business. The breakup resulted in the creation of two new companies in 1912, Atlas Powder Company and Hercules Powder Company.[10] Atlas received the explosives manufacturing portion of Du Pont's business (including the facilities acquired from the Giant Powder Company), while Hercules received the gunpowder portion.
The first management team of this new Hercules Powder Company included President H. Dunham, T.W. Bacchus, G.G. Rheuby, J.T Skelly, Norman Rood, Fred Stark, C.D. Prickett, and George Markell.[11]
Some of their products were used by the military in World War I.
In the 1920s and 30s, Hercules diversified into the pine resin products business (see below).
A school and a plant were named after T. W. Bacchus in Bacchus, Utah. By the 1960s, the community was experiencing the first signs of a suburban transition. The Hercules Powder Co., once a small dynamite manufacturing firm, had begun producing rocket motors at its Bacchus Works south of the Magna community. The growing availability of jobs was one factor encouraging subdivision development in the Magna, Kearns and West Valley areas.
Hercules Powder Company ranked 65th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[12]
On September 12, 1940, the Kenvil, New Jersey plant suffered a major explosion. News reports at the time estimated at least fifteen buildings were destroyed along with twenty-five tons of explosives. Fifty-one people were killed outright with perhaps two hundred injured and many missing.[13] This facility also exploded twice in 1934 and again in 1989.[14][15]
Richard F. Heck, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, gained experience with transition metal chemistry while working at Hercules in 1957.[16]
In 1966, the Hercules Powder Company changed its name to Hercules, Inc.[17]
In 1995, Hercules, Inc. sold its subsidiary Hercules Aerospace Co. to Alliant Techsystems Inc.[18] The sale included all of what remained of Hercules' gunpowder lines.
By the end of the 1990s, Hercules Inc., had sold off a significant number of its divisions that had not been profitable for the company. This caused the price of shares of common stock in Hercules to rise above US$70. Several successful cost-savings programs were implemented in addition to buying back its own shares. Also at that time, Hercules had a significant amount of assets available for possible purchases of other corporations. Hercules, Inc., had a Paper Technology Division (PTD) whose products were slowly becoming commodities. To survive, this division needed to obtain new products.
First, Hercules Inc., tried to purchase the Allied Colloids Company, but this was not successful. Next, Hercules bought the Betz-Dearborn Corporation. Betz-Dearborn produced mostly chemicals for paper processing, and the Hercules PTD produced mainly functional chemicals for paper. According to some business analysts, Hercules Inc. paid about three times as much for Betz-Dearborn as compared with its actual value.
Soon after the purchase of Betz-Dearborn, the price per share of stock in Hercules Inc., had dropped from above US$70 to below US$10. It has been speculated that Hercules Inc., was close to going bankrupt after this failed purchase operation. Afterwards, several senior managers were forced out of the company because of this failure; however, a significant amount of former PTD senior managers were able to keep their positions within Hercules. The price of stock shares in Hercules Inc. never recovered from this debacle. Finally, Hercules Inc. was sold off to the Ashland Corporation in 2008,[19][20] and dissolved.
In 2009, rapper George Watsky released a song about the history of the company called "Hercules".
