Herbert Henry Dow
Encyclopedia
Herbert Henry Dow was a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 born, American chemical industrialist. He is a graduate of Case School of Applied Science
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

 in Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

. His most significant achievement was the founding of the Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization .Dow...

 in 1897. He was a prolific inventor of chemical processes, compounds, and products, and was a successful businessman.

Early years

Herbert Henry Dow was born in 1866 in Belleville, Ontario
Belleville, Ontario
Belleville is a city located at the mouth of the Moira River on the Bay of Quinte in Southern Ontario, Canada, in the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor. It is the seat of Hastings County, but is politically independent of it. and the centre of the Bay of Quinte Region...

 (Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

), the eldest child of Joseph Henry Dow, an inventor and mechanical engineer. Six weeks after his birth, the family returned to their hometown of Derby, Connecticut
Derby, Connecticut
Derby is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 12,391 at the 2000 census. With of land area, Derby is Connecticut's smallest municipality.The city has a Metro-North railroad station called Derby – Shelton.-History:...

. They moved again in 1878, this time to Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

 (USA) to follow his father's job with the Derby Shovel Manufacturing Company.

Dow was a precocious child, often helping his father with mechanical problems, and inventing an incubator for chicken eggs before he was 12. Several years later he and his father coinvented a small steam turbine which the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 used for many years in torpedo propulsion.

After graduating from high school in 1884, Dow enrolled in the Case School of Applied Science
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

 (now known as Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

). While at Case, he became a member of the Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania on February 19, 1852. There are over a hundred chapters and colonies at accredited four year colleges and universities throughout the United States. More than 112,000 men have been...

 fraternity. He began specialized research into the chemical composition of brine
Brine
Brine is water, saturated or nearly saturated with salt .Brine is used to preserve vegetables, fruit, fish, and meat, in a process known as brining . Brine is also commonly used to age Halloumi and Feta cheeses, or for pickling foodstuffs, as a means of preserving them...

s in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...

 and nearby areas. He discovered that brine samples from Canton, Ohio
Canton, Ohio
Canton is the county seat of Stark County in northeastern Ohio, approximately south of Akron and south of Cleveland.The City of Caton is the largest incorporated area within the Canton-Massillon Metropolitan Statistical Area...

 and Midland, Michigan
Midland, Michigan
Midland is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan in the Tri-Cities region of the state. It is the county seat of Midland County. The city's population was 41,863 as of the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Midland Micropolitan Statistical Area....

 were very rich in bromine
Bromine
Bromine ") is a chemical element with the symbol Br, an atomic number of 35, and an atomic mass of 79.904. It is in the halogen element group. The element was isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig and Antoine Jerome Balard, in 1825–1826...

, which at the time was a primary ingredient in medicines and was used heavily in the fledgeling photographic industry. Following his graduation from Case in 1888, Dow worked for a year as a chemistry professor at Huron Street Hospital College in Cleveland, still continuing his research into the extraction of chemicals from brine.

Business Career

In 1889 Dow received his first patent after inventing a more cost-effective and streamlined process for bromine extraction. He quickly formed his own company, but was bankrupt within the year. His associates were impressed with his work and in 1890 helped him to found the Midland Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan. Dow continued his work extracting bromine and by early 1891 he had invented the Dow process
Dow process
The Dow process is the electrolytic method of bromine extraction from brine, and was Herbert Henry Dow's second revolutionary process for generating bromine commercially....

, a method of bromine extraction using electrolysis to oxidize bromide to bromine.

Foundation of Dow Chemical

Dow was not content with simply improving the bromine extraction process, but wanted to expand his research of electrolysis to yield other chemicals. His financial backers did not approve of his continued research and fired him from the Midland Chemical Company.
He continued his research, developing a process to extract chloride and caustic soda from sodium chloride. After seeking funding from potential backers in Cleveland including family friends and former Case School of Applied Science classmates, Dow secured funds from James T. Pardee, Albert W. Smith, J. H. Osborn, and Cady Staley. In 1895, Dow moved his family to Ohio and founded the Dow Process Company to develop the production mechanism for his process. The following year he returned to Midland, where he formed the Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization .Dow...

 as successor to the Dow Process Company. The Dow Process Company was ]incorporated with 57 original stockholders. Within three years, his new company had purchased the Midland Chemical Company.

Breaking a Monopoly

With his new company and new technology, Dow was able to produce bromine very cheaply, and began selling it in the United States for 36 cents per pound. At the time, the government-supported German bromine cartel
Cartel
A cartel is a formal agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production. Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products...

, Bromkonvention, had a near-monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...

 on the supply of bromine, which they sold for 49 cents per pound. The Germans had made it clear that they would flood the American market with cheap bromine if Dow attempted to sell the element abroad. In 1904 Dow defied the cartel by beginning to export his bromine at its cheaper price to England. A few months later, an angry Bromkonvention representative visited Dow in his office and reminded him to cease exporting his bromine.

Unafraid, Dow continued exporting to England and Japan. The German cartel retaliated by flooding the US market with bromine at a mere 15 cents a pound in an attempt to put him out of business. Dow, unable to compete with the attempt at predatory pricing
Predatory pricing
In business and economics, predatory pricing is the practice of selling a product or service at a very low price, intending to drive competitors out of the market, or create barriers to entry for potential new competitors. If competitors or potential competitors cannot sustain equal or lower prices...

 in the U.S., instructed his agents to quietly buy up hundreds of thousands of pounds of the German bromine locally at the low price. The Dow company then turned the tables on the cartel by repackaging the bromine and exporting it to Europe, including Germany, at 27 cents a pound. The cartel, expecting Dow to go out of business, was unable to comprehend what was driving the enormous demand for bromine in the U.S., and where all the cheap imported bromine flooding their market was coming from. They even suspected their own members of violating their price-fixing agreement and selling in Germany below the cartel's fixed cost. The befuddled cartel continued to slash prices on their bromine in the U.S., first to 12 cents a pound, and then to 10.5 cents per pound. Dow continued selling the dumped bromine in Germany at 27 cents per pound. When the cartel finally caught on to Dow's tactic, they realized they could not keep selling below cost, and were forced to increase their prices worldwide. Dow's triumph has been used as an argument that predatory pricing
Predatory pricing
In business and economics, predatory pricing is the practice of selling a product or service at a very low price, intending to drive competitors out of the market, or create barriers to entry for potential new competitors. If competitors or potential competitors cannot sustain equal or lower prices...

 is an irrational practice that would never work in the real world.

World War I

The new company focused on research, and soon was able to extract many more chemicals from brine. The company was given a large opportunity to grow during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, when Britain blockaded the ports of Germany, which at the time included most of the world's largest chemical suppliers. Dow Chemical quickly moved to fill the gap, producing magnesium
Magnesium
Magnesium is a chemical element with the symbol Mg, atomic number 12, and common oxidation number +2. It is an alkaline earth metal and the eighth most abundant element in the Earth's crust and ninth in the known universe as a whole...

 for incendiary flares, monochlorobenzene
Chlorobenzene
Chlorobenzene is an aromatic organic compound with the chemical formula C6H5Cl. This colorless, flammable liquid is a common solvent and a widely used intermediate in the manufacture of other chemicals.-Uses:...

 and phenol
Phenol
Phenol, also known as carbolic acid, phenic acid, is an organic compound with the chemical formula C6H5OH. It is a white crystalline solid. The molecule consists of a phenyl , bonded to a hydroxyl group. It is produced on a large scale as a precursor to many materials and useful compounds...

 for explosives, and bromine for medicines and tear gas. By 1918, 90% of the Dow Chemical Company production was in support of the war effort. During this time period, Dow also created the diamond logo that is still used by the Dow Chemical Company.

Auto industry

Following the conclusion of the War, Dow began to research the benefits of magnesium, which the company had in large supply. He discovered that it could be used to make automobile pistons. The new pistons proved to give more speed and better fuel efficiency. The Dowmetal pistons were used heavily in racing vehicles, and the 1921 winner of the Indianapolis 500
Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, also known as the Indianapolis 500, the 500 Miles at Indianapolis, the Indy 500 or The 500, is an American automobile race, held annually, typically on the last weekend in May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana...

 used the Dowmetal pistons in his vehicle.

Death

By the time of his death on October 15, 1930 from cirrhosis
Cirrhosis
Cirrhosis is a consequence of chronic liver disease characterized by replacement of liver tissue by fibrosis, scar tissue and regenerative nodules , leading to loss of liver function...

 of the liver, Dow had personally received over 90 patents. Dow was survived by his wife, Grace, and five of their seven children.

Commemoration

In 1899, Dow started the Dow Gardens
Dow Gardens
Dow Gardens is a botanical garden located at 1809 Eastman Avenue, Midland, Michigan, USA. It is open to the public, and currently contains over 1700 varieties of plants hardy in mid-Michigan. The main entrance has geographical coordinates of ....

 in Midland, Michigan
Midland, Michigan
Midland is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan in the Tri-Cities region of the state. It is the county seat of Midland County. The city's population was 41,863 as of the 2010 census. It is the principal city of the Midland Micropolitan Statistical Area....

 as a personal hobby.

H. H. Dow High School in Midland, Michigan, is named after Dow. Among his awards is the Perkin Medal
Perkin Medal
The Perkin Medal is an award given annually by the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry to a scientist residing in America for an "innovation in applied chemistry resulting in outstanding commercial development." It is considered the highest honor given in the US industrial chemical...

, received in 1930.

His home in Midland, known as Herbert H. Dow House
Herbert H. Dow House
The Herbert H. Dow House, also known as Dow House, was the home of Herbert H. Dow, founder of Dow Chemical Company.It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976....

, was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...

in 1976.
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