Inventor Name
Gee, Edwin Austin
Repository
Hagley Museum & Library
Manuscripts & Archives Department
P.O. Box 3630
Wilmington, DE 19807-0630
302-658-2400
https://www.hagley.org/research
Physical Description
1.5 linear ft
Summary
Edwin A. Gee did his undergraduate work at George Washington University and received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Maryland in 1948. During World War II, he was an assistant chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Bureau of Mines. In 1948 he was hired by the Du Pont Company and, after a decade of working in the sales division of the Pigments Department, he became an assistant director, and then director of the Development Department and in 1970 an Executive Committee member. In 1960 President Crawford Greenewalt put Gee in charge of a diversification program which eventually became known as the "New Ventures Program." As part of this effort, Gee initiated a program to develop marketable products from the large number of analytical and process instruments that Du Pont manufactured for its own use. This project led the company into the medical instrument field but was otherwise seen as a failure in terms of return on investment, and it was discontinued int the late 1960s. In late 1974 Gee's efforts were rewarded with the establishment of a Corporate Plans Dept. and the consolidation of most research into a Central Research & Development Dept. In 1978 Gee retired from Du Pont to become a director of International Paper Company. The papers of Edwin A. Gee are a fragment and cover only a small portion of his work in the Development Dept. and as a member of DuPont's Executive Committee. The records were collected by David A. Hounshell and John K. Smith while researching their book SCIENCE AND CORPORATE STRATEGY: DU PONT R&D, 1902-1980. The records have been arranged in two series. Series I. contains records related to efforts at improving DuPont's techical information retrieval systems, particularly with regard to patent documentation services. Gee was involved with an early Development Dept. study of existing patent documentation practices, which led to the creation of a central patent index in 1964. Series II contains records related to the Development Department's diversification program and the Executive Committee's evaluation of the company's research and development strategy which resulted in the creation of the Corporate Plans Dept. and a consolidated Central Research & Development Dept. These records include Gee's correspondence with research directors and his reports, discussion papers, and memoranda to the Executive Committee. Also included in this series are reports issued by the Committee on Exploratory Research and a Development Dept. report on the New Venture Program with related statistical analysis worksheets.
