This paper revisits the history of DuPont's fundamental research program during the interwar period. This program epitomized the new relationship between science and industry that unfolded in this period. Historians have largely portrayed this program as the emergence of university-style research in corporate environments, resulting in radical innovations like nylon and the transistor. Although at the corporate level fundamental research was conflated with pure science and radical innovation, a close examination of the colloid chemistry and physics groups, which have not undergone historians' scrutiny, reveals a different picture. A feeling of symbiosis between scientific and industrial or technological rationales was achieved through a deliberate strategy of materials improvement grounded in the exploration of their microscopic components. I call this process the "taming of the microworld."

This chapter recounts and analyzes the emergence of modern paint chemistry and technology in the United States. Until late in the 19th century, painting was above all a decorative art and craft, and chemists' role in the paint trade was largely circumscribed to the development of new pigments. At the turn of the 20th century, however, the protective dimension of paints rose in prominence and the standing and influence of chemists within the trade and industry rose tremendously. Charles Dudley, a chemist at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, initiated this movement. A new field quickly coalesced around the American Society for Testing Materials, the Paint Manufacturers Association, and later the American Chemical Society. In the process, the paint coat became firmly established as a material in itself, rather than a mere mixture of heterogeneous ingredients. The erstwhile conflation of "pure" paint with "good" paint became suddenly obsolete.