Baker's history

The "pound" era of high-purity chemicals-J.T. Baker opened a new chapter in the history of chemical industry.

In the 18 and 19 centuries, high-purity chemicals were usually purified by independent chemists according to their own needs or exchanged with other chemists. Until the middle of19th century, with the rapid development of chemical analysis in scientific research and education, chemical industry, photography industry and pharmaceutical industry, high-purity chemical industry was born.

Until the1880s, the United States and other parts of North America imported high-purity chemicals from Europe and suffered from frequent shortages and unstable quality. At this time, it is precisely because of the appearance of three founders, John Thomson Baker, Edward Hart and George Adamson-J.T. Baker, that this phenomenon was changed, and the era of large-scale supply of high-purity chemicals in the United States began.

John Thomson Baker 1860 was born in Orange, New Jersey. 1882 received his bachelor's degree from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and 1884 received his master's degree. During his college years, Baker needed high-purity chemical reagents and products for chemical analysis, which caused his dissatisfaction with imported chemicals, because although they were marked with "CP" (chemical purity), they often contained impurities, which affected his chemical experiments. After rejecting Baker's experiment, a professor sneered, "Young man, since you are so smart, why don't you make your own chemicals?" Although this sentence made Baker unhappy, it also became a prophecy. Hart, head of the Department of Chemistry at lafayette University, supports Baker to take risks and make real high-purity chemicals; In fact, Hart was Baker's first sponsor, and he invested $500 in Baker.

Edward Hart's promotion to professor is full of legends and twists and turns, and his contribution to American chemistry is rich and colorful. Hart was born in 1854, and graduated from English and Classics Seminary in Doyle Town (PA) at the age of 18. As a corrector and editor, Hart studied law in his uncle's office for two years. And do chemical experiments in my mother's attic. Subsequently, 1872, Hart entered the private laboratory of Thomas Mesinger Deptre in Philadelphia as an assistant. 1874, Hart became the first student to be hired by Drown, a professor of analytical chemistry at Lafayette College. As a teaching assistant and teaching assistant at Drown, Hart won a scholarship from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) and received his doctorate at 1878. Later, Hart rejoined Lafayette College as an associate professor, and Baker became his first student.

1882, Baker and Hart rented an acre of land one step away from Lafayette College at an annual rent of 10. The land is full of springs and water, so they built simple sheds and reaction boilers and began to produce a large number of chemically pure salts and acids, including hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, acetic acid, sulfur-containing compounds and ammonia water. Hart said in his memoir, "Two years later, we began to make profits, but we found that our funds had been exhausted and our output was still too small."

Another student of Hart, George Piserglo Adamson, soon joined them. Although Adamson is two grades younger than Bibeek, he has something that Baker and Hart don't have: wealthy families in Philadelphia provide Adamson with sufficient funds. He invested $2,000 to become a partner of Beckhart Company. The injection of new cash flow is like a catalyst, and Baker's business has made amazing progress. Easton Daily Free News reported: "Young and enterprising gentlemen go all out to ensure the quality and supply of products. They have achieved good performance and development, and there is no doubt that a bright future awaits them. "

Baker, Hart and Adamson each invested $50,000 to establish Baker &; Adamson Chemical Company. The company's business is full of vigor and vitality, with better price and greater expansion, but it has attracted the attention of all walks of life-because the smoke of chemical industry is getting stronger and stronger. Therefore, the company moved to a large piece of land on the sparsely populated Lihai River-two miles from the campus, and more importantly, it is close to the railway. The shed with brick and wood structure has expanded the distillation system of acidic chemicals. Hart recalled: "We invested a lot of money in the experiment, and a large number of board houses enabled us to provide chemical products quickly and stably. We were young and energetic, and often worked 15 hours a day. "

Thanks to Hart, Baker's invention got a lot of credit funds. "He has a large number of invention patents, he is indomitable and persistent, and he still works hard when others have given up, thus achieving great success," Hart wrote in his memoir that he invented the wax bottle. Therefore, they won the John Scott Medal of Franklin Institute, because this invention made it possible to sell hydrofluoric acid in small packages and became a common package in the market. Before 1950 polyethylene bottles appeared, they were all top works of art.

As you can imagine, due to the continuous and stable product quality and the rapid development of high-purity chemicals industry, Baker &; Adamson Company attracted the attention of General Chemical Company, a chemical giant at that time. "I opposed selling the company, but afterwards my partner insisted that I was right. If we had saved the company, we would have achieved great success, "Hart mentioned in his memoir, so after selling the company, the three became managers of General Chemical Company.

Hart and Adamson quickly adapted to the work of the new company, but Baker found it difficult to integrate into this huge organization. He still put his inspiration and ideas into action, but others didn't. In other words, Baker needs to own his own company.

1904 In May, Baker set up J.T. Baker Chemical Company with $65,438+million, located on the Delaware River in New Jersey. This is not noticeable, after all, at the beginning of the company, there were only 20 employees and 6 wooden houses, where high-purity inorganic acids and high-purity chemical salts were produced. However, it was here that John Thomson Baker began to practice his ideals. He told the employees of the company that our standard is "the highest purity possible in business".

J.T.Baker's high-purity analytical chemicals-the history of high-purity chemical industry began to change here.

In order to make J.T.Baker company different, Baker firmly believes that if users have a more accurate understanding of the products they want to buy, they will benefit from it, so Baker indicates the impurity content and accurate substance purity on the label of the company's product packaging. His innovative idea is to extract a small number of samples from each batch of chemical products, whether in pounds or tons, for purity analysis. The analysis result and batch number are printed on the label of J.T.Baker Analytical Chemical Company. Moreover, the analysis samples are packaged independently and carefully preserved, so that the analysis of this batch of products can still be confirmed again after several years of sales.

His idea has proved to be fruitful, and careful analysis and careful sample retention are the core keys to J.T.Baker's ultimate success on a global scale.

The first world war gave J.T.Baker and other American chemical companies challenges and opportunities, because a large number of chemicals were produced in Europe before, and at this time, the demand for chemical materials for military materials and medicines increased greatly, and American companies began to enter the field of chemical production that they had never been exposed to before.

1920s, J.T.Baker's high wartime production capacity enabled the company to enter the pharmaceutical raw material industry. At that time, Baker was 60 years old and nearly retired (1926, Baker resigned as president of the company), but he still devoted himself to improving and improving the research of manufacturing industry.

He innovatively invented the production of high purity acid by using tantalum-lined and titanium-lined equipment, and invented granular potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide widely used in various laboratories. His patent is impressive. After retirement, Baker became the chairman of the board of directors of the company and was active in the daily activities of the company until John Thomson Baker died in a golf tournament in Lake Wales, Florida on 1935.

The "ton" era of high-purity chemicals-the glorious history of J.T. Baker has been going on.

Following the pharmaceutical industry, J.T.Baker Company has expanded its influence in the chemical raw material industry by providing products of higher level than conventional manufacturers, and has been widely used. The production method and technology of high-purity chemicals in the laboratory have been improved, so that high-purity chemical raw materials can be produced in large quantities from sodium tungstate and stannous chloride. At the end of 1920s, more than 30 chemicals were successfully mass-produced. Since then, high-purity chemicals have entered the production workshop from the laboratory, and high-purity chemicals have entered the "ton" era from the "pound" era.

194 1 year, after the Pearl Harbor bombing 10 (194 1 65438+February 7th, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in the United States), J.T. Baker was in194/kloc.

1960 Vic Chemical was renamed Richardson Merrill Lynch.

1985 proctor &; Gamble (Procter & Gamble) acquired Richardson Merrill (in this acquisition, Procter & Gamble also owns famous brands such as Olay, Pan Ting and Vicks, which originally belonged to Richardson Merrill).

1995 Mallinckrodt acquired J.T.Baker and established Mallinckrodt Baker, Inc(MBI).

In 2000, Tyco acquired Mallinckrodt Baker.

In 2005, Tyco Medical Group was renamed Covidien Company, and MBI became a part of Covidien Company.

On 20 10, Mallinckrodt Baker became a member of Johor Bahru.

20/kloc-20 10-Mallinckrodt Baker Company officially changed its name to Avantor Performance Materials Company 201–Avantor Company acquired RFCL Limited Company A Company 201–Avantor Company's Mallinckrodt brand changed to Macron brand.

When John Thomson Baker retired, J.T. Baker's annual sales exceeded one million dollars, half of which came from high-purity chemicals in the laboratory and the other half from pharmaceutical industry and fine chemicals. The company has about 100 employees and produces 1600 kinds of high-purity chemicals.

By the end of 20 12, J.T.Baker had more than 1000 employees and produced more than 10000 kinds of ultra-high purity chemicals. All the factories have passed ISO 900 1 certification, and the factories in Philippsburg and Divant in the United States have also passed ISO 1400 1 certification.

Since its establishment, J.T.Baker has been adhering to the ideals and beliefs of its founder, John Townsend Baker, to provide the market with the highest purity chemicals that can be commercialized.