Frank L. Fullam

Background

He was born in West Brookfield, Massachussets, the son of Lemuel Fullam, a boot and shoe manufacturer, and Susan French Adams Fullam.

Education

In 1890 he entered Worcester Academy and four years later he enrolled in Harvard College as a special student in chemistry.

Career

Leaving Harvard after about a year, Fullam joined the E. R. Squibb and Sons chemical company in Brooklyn, New York, where he spent several years as assistant to Edward R. Squibb, the firm's president.

In 1897 he joined Harry Fletcher Brown, whom he had known at Harvard, at the United States Navy's torpedo station in Newport, Rhod Island. There Fullam became part of a team of chemists that performed many of the important early experiments in smokeless powder, leading eventually to the development of the navy's modern smokeless propellants. Their work was of particular significance because at the time the United States lagged far behind Germany, France, and Great Britain in the production of smokeless powder.

In 1900 Fullam followed Brown to the International Smokeless Powder and Chemical Company in Parlin, New Jersey, where he served first as a ballistics expert and later as chief chemist. International Smokeless, founded in 1899, quickly secured important federal government contracts and by 1903 supplied 35 percent of the powder necessary for both the navy and the army.

The success of International Smokeless attracted the attention of Pierre S. Du Pont and other executives of the Du Pont Company in nearby Delaware. Negotiations between the two chemical firms began late in 1903 and a merger was arranged the following year, with International retaining a separate legal and financial structure.

Pierre Du Pont brought Brown from International to head Du Pont's new smokeless powder department and left Fullam as superintendent of the International plants at Parlin.

In 1920 Fullam retired; after several years of traveling he and his family settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where he died at the age of eighty-one.

Achievements

• From 1905 to 1920, Fullam served as superintendent and later manager of the Parlin complex. During this time he supervised several new manufacturing developments and advanced further research in the field of ballistics. Fullam also directed the operations leading to the discovery of a new lacquer for automobile finishes, later given the trade name Duco by the Du Pont Company. Duco paints were first used on automobiles by the Du Pont-controlled General Motors Corporation in 1923.

Connections

In September 1906, Fullam married Mabel Alice French. They had five children.

Wife:

Mabel Alice French

father Lemuel Fullam mother Susan French Adams Fullam

colleague:

Edward R. Squibb