ICI Exhibition Booklet - Flipbook - Page 7
Founders of ICI
‘Born with innovation in its blood’
– Carol Kennedy
ICI The Company That Changed Our Lives
In 1870s Britain, the innovation of two leading scientists laid foundation to a powerful chemical industry. Their companies
and legacy of inventive research applied to business became the building blocks of ICI.
Alfred Nobel (1833–1896) Father of the Nobel Peace Prize
A Swedish chemist, Nobel worked closely with his father, Immanuel, a builder and mechanical engineer with an
inventive mind and deep interest in explosives. It was in this partnership that he first encountered nitroglycerin
and became convinced that, if used safely, it would prove far more effective than gunpowder.
Nobel developed a string of inventions, including dynamite (1867) – described as the greatest advances in
science of explosives.
Nobel founded his industrial empire in 1871 with the British Dynamite Company, at Ardeer, near Glasgow. Nobel
Companies spread through Europe and America, leading the world in blasting explosives or industrial use.
Despite his business achievements, Nobel preferred the excitement of research and, on reading a premature
obituary condemning him for profiting from the sales of arms, he bequeathed his fortune to the Nobel
Foundation – for prizes in art, science, and the pursuit of peace.
Nobel Industries Ltd formed in 1920 through a series of mergers of British explosive companies by Sir Harry McGowan, who
rose from office clerk with Nobel’s Explosive Company to chairman of Nobel Industries.
Ludwig Mond (1839–1909) Commercialisation of the Solvay Process
Born into a non-scientific German family, Mond studied chemistry at the Universities of Marburg and Heidelberg
(under Robert Bunsen). He left both without taking his degree, believing chemical manufacturers did not need
formal qualifications.
In 1860, Mond was offered a job in a Leblanc soda plant, where the chemical process was polluting the
surrounding landscape and wasting key chemicals. This led to his first patent, filed aged 22, for recovering
sulphur from alkali waste.
These formative years shaped his perception that the future of the alkali industry lay with the Solvay process, a
much cleaner method of manufacture.
Mond proposed a licensing agreement with the Solvay family, including a free exchange of research and
development – a remarkable example of international cooperation for its time.
In 1862, Mond moved to England, Europe’s largest soda producer, and set up in Manchester with a leading
Leblanc soda manufacturer to put his sulphur recovery process in place. It was through this partnership that
Mond met the Brunner family, of German-Swiss origin and, notably, his future business partner John Brunner.
Brunner, Mond and Company formed in 1873, beginning operations at Winnington Hall, Northwich, a house that later became
an elite ICI manager’s club. Business did not get off to a good start, with the image of industrial pollution proving difficult, on
top of troubles with the process itself. Brunner later recalled, ‘everything that could break down did break down.’
The founding members of SCI included Ludwig Mond, who was at the first
pre-1881 meetings and became Secretary of the newly-formed society, and
then became President between1888–89.
Other founding members included Sir Henry Roscoe (president 1881–82), Sir
Frederick Abel (president 1882–83, embroiled in a patent war with Nobel in
late 1890s), and Sir William Perkin (president 1884–85).
The Brunner family, of Brunner, Mond and Co, still remain involved with SCI
today.