AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETYDivision of the History of Chemistry andThe Office of Public Outreach

FIRSTCOMMERCIALPRODUCTIONOFBROMINE IN THEUNITED STATESMIDLAND, MICHIGANMAY 29, 1997

A NATIONAL HISTORICCHEMICAL LANDMARK

On the cover: Herbert H. Dow in 1888;Midland Chemical Company workers,1894; the Evens Mill.

Acknowledgments:The American Chemical Society gratefully acknowledges the assistance of

those who collaborated on the content of this booklet, including companyhistorian E. N. (Ned) Brandt, of The Dow Chemical Company; Angelo J. Cassar,Gretchen S. Kohl, and Maris J. Ziemelis, Midland Section, American ChemicalSociety; and James J. Bohning, American Chemical Society, the NHCLPAdvisory Committee liaison.

This booklet was produced by the ACS Office of Public Outreach. Design:Dahlman Middour Design. Photographs courtesy of the Post Street Archives,Midland, Michigan, and The Dow Chemical Company.

Copyright © 1997 American Chemical Society

This booklet commemorates the desig-

nation of the first commercial produc-

tion of bromine in the United States as

a National Historic Chemical

Landmark. This designation was conferred by the

American Chemical Society, a nonprofit scientific

and educational organization of more than 152,000

chemists and chemical engineers. A plaque mark-

ing the event was presented at the replica of the

Evens Mill, which now serves as the home of the

Herbert H. Dow Museum in Midland, Michigan.

The inscription reads:

“In the original of this building about one mile

east of this site, on January 4, 1891, Herbert H. Dow

succeeded in producing bromine electrolytically

from Midland’s rich brine resources. In the years

that followed, this and other processes developed by

Dow and the company he founded led to an

increasing stream of chemicals from brines. The

commercial success of these endeavors helped to

promote the growth of the American chemical

industry.”

Replica of the Evens Mill which now housesthe Herbert H. Dow Museum.

A TURNING POINTIN CHEMICAL HISTORY

In the late 19th century, chemical production inthe United States was still in its infancy. Much ofthe nation’s chemical supply was imported fromEurope, especially from powerful producers inGermany and Great Britain. This state of affairsprevailed largely until World War I, which marked aturning point for chemical production in this coun-try. With European imports cut off, American pro-ducers could, for the first time, make and markettheir chemicals without interference from theEuropean cartels, which established prices and pro-duction quotas for the makers of key products.

In the early 1890s, pioneers of the U.S. chem-ical industry had begun to form a technologicalbasis for competing with the European giants.Herbert H. Dow was one of the earliest of thesetrailblazers. As a college chemistry student inCleveland, Ohio, he becameinterested in the brinedeposits that underliemuch of theAmerican Midwest.Here was an almostinexhaustible poolof chemical materi-als deposited by theevaporation of pre-historic seas, justwaiting, he per-ceived, to beexploited. In fact,where thesedeposits lay closeto the earth’s sur-face, enterprising

scientists had already begunto use crude productionmethods to mine themfor chemicals.

To manufacturebromine, for example, amain component of thepatent medicines of theday, brine wells werebeing drilled near WestVirginia and Ohio coalmines. After chemicalssuch as sulfuric acid andbleaching powder were addedto free bromine from otherelements in the brine, wastefrom a neighboring coal minewas used to boil the brineuntil the reddish-brown liquid bromine came offwith the steam. In areas of Michigan where lum-bering was done, the same process was used, withwaste lumber as the fuel source.

Herbert H. Dow in 1888,when he graduated fromthe Case School of AppliedScience in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Evens Mill, rented by Herbert Dow in1890 as the location of his new enterprise, theMidland Chemical Company. Dow chose thisgrist mill because it provided his basicrequirements: a source of brine and a sourceof electrical energy. Here Dow did his earlyexperiments in bromine and chlorineproduction from brines underlyingcentral Michigan.

1

2

THE IMPORTANCE OFELECTROCHEMISTRY

While he was still a schoolboy, Herbert Dowinvented a “blowing-out” method of extract-

ing bromine from the brine. Instead of boiling thetreated brine solution, he trickled it over a burlapcurtain and blew a current of air through it. “Bypassing the bromine-laden air through a body ofiron turnings,” Dow said in his patent, “the bromineand iron will chemically unite, forming a bromide ofiron known as ferric bromide.” Because the air wasmoist, the ferric bromide was in a solution that wasan “article of commerce.”

Not content with thisimprovement, Dow tried to use anelectric current instead of a chem-ical treatment to free the brominefrom its combined form in thebrine. After many failures, hesucceeded in obtaining bromineby this method, but he still usedthe blowing-out technique totransform the elemental bromineinto a salable product. Since theoriginal ferric bromide solutionwas not the form desired by mostcustomers, Dow then convertedthe bromine into solid productssuch as zinc, sodium, and potas-sium bromides. Herbert Dow thusbecame a late-19th-century suc-cessor to the 18th-century pio-neers who had establishedelectrochemistry—among them

Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Humphry Davy,and Michael Faraday. His electrolytic cell was theearliest devoted specifically to chemical manufac-ture, although numerous other such cells weredeveloped in the 1890s, mostly in the Niagara Falls,New York, area where low-cost electricity becameavailable.

Dow became the world’s most efficientbromine manufacturer through his successful appli-cation of electrochemistry. By 1897, when he estab-lished The Dow Chemical Company, he had

sufficient experience and financial backing to enterthe world market for bromine. However, he soonfound himself in competition with the German mas-ter chemists who found it difficult to believe that anAmerican could produce bromine in the backwoodsof Michigan more cost-effectively than they.

In 1905, alarmed by The Dow Company’sintrusion on their markets, the German chemicalcommunity determined to crush this newcomerthrough the Deutsche Bromkonvention, the world-wide bromine cartel. The Dow enterprise survivedthis effort only by secretly purchasing the cheaperbromides with which the cartel flooded the U.S.market. Dow repackaged the bromides and soldthem in Europe, where the cartel maintained a goodprice for them. This stratagem worked, and theGermans withdrew from the U.S. bromine market.For the first time, an American chemical firm bat-tled the big German chemical companies and won;and by 1909, Herbert Dow was the leading manufac-turer of bromides.

Illustration from Herbert Dow’s“Process of Extracting Bromine,”patented in 1891.

Most of the work force of the Midland Chemical Company, whereHerbert Dow first manufactured bromine by electrolysis, 1894.

3

THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRYMOVESWEST

AsHerbert Dow had foreseen, tapping the brines of theAmerican Midwest for bromine led to the extraction of

other elements—especially chlorine—from the brines andstimulated the growth of the nation’s chemical industry westof the Allegheny Mountains. This spurt in growth, com-bined with the reduction of competition for domestic mar-kets during World War I, helped the U.S. industry shake offthe long-standing domination of the European chemicalmakers. At the same time, the ready availability of brominecontributed to the development of the American pharma-ceutical industry and the rapid growth of the photographicindustry, another important new business. As the stream ofchemical products derived from the brine deposits expanded,a steady and reasonably priced supply of chemicals strength-ened the U.S. economy.

Early brine well. Herbert Dowdrilled this type of well around

most of central Michiganto tap the underground

brines of the area.

4

HERBERT HENRY DOW (1866–1930)

Herbert H. Dow, born in Belleville, Ontario,Canada, was reared to a life of enterprise and

invention by his father, J. Henry Dow, a tinkererand inventor best remembered for the Dow turbine,a device that powered U.S. Navy torpedoes duringmuch of the 19th century. He grew up inCleveland, Ohio, and graduated from the Case

School of AppliedScience in 1888,having studied chem-istry with therenowned Edward W.Morley and physicswith Albert A.Michelson, the firstU.S. Nobel laureate(1907). Dow’s seniorthesis, a study of thecomposition ofnorthern Ohio saltbrines, initiated alifelong interest in“mining” the chemi-cals stored in under-ground brines. By

graduation, he had devised his “blowing-out”process for liberating bromine from the brine andreceived the first of 107 patents he eventually wasgranted.

In 1889, Dow formed the Canton ChemicalCompany (Canton, Ohio) to exploit his invention.The company failed because the process was noteconomically feasible. Dow then began experimentsusing electrolytic cells. In 1890 he moved toMidland, Mich., and established the MidlandChemical Company, where he first producedbromine electrolytically. Once this firm was operat-ing successfully, Dow began extracting other ele-ments from the brine, beginning with chlorine. Hisbackers, however, refused to fund these efforts, andhe was fired in 1894. Undaunted, he returned tothe Canton area and formed the Dow ProcessCompany, where he worked in great secrecy to per-fect his electrolytic cell to extract chlorine frombrine. In 1897, with the help of supporters inCleveland, he formed The Dow Chemical

Company, using his new chlorine cell to makebleach as its original product. The company was animmediate success and in 1900 absorbed theMidland Chemical Company.

In succeeding years, during which Dow contin-ued his work at the lab bench, the company madeand marketed a growing number of products derivedfrom the brine stream, ranging from chloroform andsodium benzoate to calcium chloride and Epsomsalts. During World War I, the company succeededin extracting magnesium metal from the brines andwas the first in the United States to synthesizeindigo, a key dyestuff cut off from U.S. markets bythe war in Europe.

After World War I, Charles F. Kettering andThomas Midgley, Jr., of General Motors, the devel-opers of tetraethyl lead, came to Herbert Dow with atechnical problem. Their desire to make tetraethyllead, or “ethyl” gas (which prevented knocking inautomobile engines), available to U.S. motoristswould require huge volumes of ethylene dibromideand therefore more bromine than anyone in theworld could produce. “Perhaps more bromine thanexists in the world,” Midgley said. “Then we’ll haveto go to the oceans for it,” Dow told them. Theocean waters, he explained, were simply “dilutedbrines.”

By 1929, he was ready to build a plant toextract bromine from seawater, but death inter-vened. (Dow died on Oct. 16, 1930.) His workwas completed in 1934 by his son and successor asthe company’s president, Willard H. Dow.

Herbert H. Dow, 1924

Main Street in Midland, Michigan, as it appeared about 1898.

Ray H. Boundy and J. Lawrence Amos, eds. A History ofthe Dow Chemical Physics Lab. New York: Marcel Dekker,1990.

E. N. Brandt. Growth Company: Dow Chemical’s FirstCentury. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,1997.

E. N. Brandt and Barbara S. Brennan. The Papers of HerbertH. Dow.Midland, Mich.: Northwood University Press,1990.

Murray Campbell and Harrison Hatton. Herbert H. Dow:Pioneer in Creative Chemistry. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951.

Thomas Griswold, Jr. The Time of My Life. Midland,Mich.: Northwood University Press, 1973.

William H. Gross. The Story of Magnesium. Cleveland,Ohio: American Society for Metals, 1949.

Williams Haynes. American Chemical Industry: A History(in six volumes). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1954.

Robert S. Karpiuk. Dow Research Pioneers, 1888–1949.Midland, Mich.: Pendell Publishing, 1981.

Margaret C. Levenstein. “Information Systems and InternalOrganization: A Study of The Dow Chemical Company,1888–1914.” Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1991.

Joseph C. Robert. Ethyl: A History of the Corporation and thePeople Who Made It. Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1983.

DonWhitehead. The Dow Story. New York: McGraw-Hill,1968.

Dorothy L. Yates. Salt of the Earth, A History of MidlandCounty, Michigan. Midland, Mich.: Midland CountyHistorical Society, 1987.

FURTHER READING

THE NATIONAL HISTORIC CHEMICAL LANDMARKSPROGRAMOF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

The ACS National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program recognizesour scientific and technical heritage and encourages the preservation of his-torically important achievements and artifacts in chemistry, chemical engi-neering, and the chemical process industries. It provides an annotatedroster to remind chemists, chemical engineers, students, educators, histori-ans, and travelers of an inspiring heritage that illuminates both where wehave been and where we might go when traveling the diverse paths todiscovery.

An ACS Historic Chemical Milestone designation marks a landmarkstep in the evolution of the chemical sciences and technologies. A Sitedesignation marks the location of an artifact, event, or other developmentof clear historical importance to chemists and chemical engineers. AnHistoric Collection designation marks the contributions of a number ofobjects with special significance to the historical development of chemistryand chemical engineering.

This program began in 1992, when the Division of the History ofChemistry of the ACS formed an international Advisory Committee. The Committee, composed of chemists,chemical engineers, and historians of science and technology, works with the ACS Office of Public Outreach andis assisted by the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Together, these organizations provide a public service by exam-ining, noting, recording, and acknowledging particularly significant achievements in chemistry and chemicalengineering. For further information, please contact the ACS Office of Public Outreach, 1155 Sixteenth Street,N.W., Washington, DC 20036; 1-800-ACS-5558, ext. 6274.

NATIONAL HISTORICCHEMICAL LANDMARK

FIRST COMMERCIALPRODUCTION OFBROMINE IN THEUNITED STATES

Midland, Michigan1891

In the original of this building about one mileeast of this site, on January 4, 1891, Herbert H. Dowsucceeded in producing bromine electrolytically fromMidland’s rich brine resources. In the years thatfollowed, this and other processes developed by Dowand the company he founded led to an increas ingstream of chemicals from brines . The commercia lsuccess of these endeavors helped to promotethe growth of the American chemical industry .

American Chemical Society May 29, 1997

The American Chemical SocietyPaul S. Anderson, PresidentPaul H. L. Walter, President-ElectJoan E. Shields, Board ChairmanJohn K Crum, Executive DirectorAnn B. Messmore, Director, Public Outreach

ACS Division of the History of ChemistryHarold Goldwhite, ChairVera V. Mainz, Secretary-Treasurer

ACS Midland SectionJoan M. Sabourin, ChairArthur G. Smith, Chair-ElectAnn F. Birch, SecretaryMichael J. Owen, Treasurer

Historical Site CommitteeE. N. Brandt, Post St. Archives,

The Dow Chemical CompanyAngelo J. Cassar, Midland SectionJames L. Hunter, Herbert H. Dow MuseumGretchen S. Kohl, Midland SectionThomas H. Lane, Midland SectionGary F. Skory, Midland County Historical SocietyMaris J. Ziemelis, Midland Section

ACS Advisory Committee onNational Historic Chemical LandmarksChair: Ned D. Heindel, Lehigh UniversityJames J. Bohning, American Chemical SocietyJon B. Eklund, National Museum of

American HistoryYasu Furukawa, Tokyo Denki UniversityLeon Gortler, Brooklyn CollegePaul R. Jones, University of MichiganJames W. Long, University of OregonPeter J. T. Morris, Science Museum, LondonMary Virginia Orna, Chemical Heritage

FoundationStanley I. Proctor, Jr., Proctor Consulting ServicesJeffrey L. Sturchio, Merck & Co., Inc.Frankie K. Wood-Black, Phillips PetroleumAnn C. Higgins, ACS Staff Liaison

American Chemical Society1155 Sixteenth Street, N.W.Washington, DC 20036