Other Carbide Items/Union Carbide Can Back

Other Carbide Items

Union Carbide Can Back.JPG - UNION CARBIDE CAN - Small (2-pound size) Union Carbide can; blue and white, complete with marked original lid, manufactured by Union Carbide Corp, New York (The Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. (UCC) was formed in 1917 from the combination of four companies: Union Carbide Co. (incorporated 1898), Linde Air Products Co. (incorporated 1907), National Carbon Co., Inc. (incorporated 1899), and Prest-O-Lite Co., Inc. (incorporated 1913). The new entity was organized as a holding company, with its four members acting relatively autonomously and cooperating where their businesses converged. The oldest member of the quartet, Union Carbide, had been formed to manufacture calcium carbide. A by-product of alloying calcium carbide with aluminum was acetylene, a gas that company executives hoped would prove useful for street and household lighting. But when Thomas Edison's electric incandescent light bulbs proved more practical for most lighting, it looked as if Union Carbide's acetylene lighting business was obsolete. Luckily, a French researcher discovered that acetylene could be burned in oxygen to produce a hot, metal-cutting flame and a whole new market for the gas emerged. The company continued to manufacture calcium carbide at plants in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Niagara Falls, New York. In 1919, the company created Canadian subsidiaries of National Carbon Co. and Prest-O-Lite, and purchased a new headquarters at 42nd Street and Madison Avenue in New York City that served the company until the late 1970s. The company name was changed to Union Carbide Corporation in 1957 to reflect its reorganization from a holding company to a diversified corporation. By that time, Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation had established some 400 plants in the United States and Canada, in addition to overseas affiliates. Union Carbide Corporation became the world's largest producer of ethylene glycol, commonly used as antifreeze, and a leading manufacturer of the world's most widely used plastic, polyethylene. A massive disaster at Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, in December 1984 killed over 2,300 people and permanently injured another 10,000. Newsweek magazine called the incident "the worst industrial accident in history." The aftermath of the Bhopal accident sent the company into financial difficulties and in 2001, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Corp.)

Union Carbide Can Back | UNION CARBIDE CAN - Small (2-pound size) Union Carbide can; blue and white, complete with marked original lid, manufactured by Union Carbide Corp, New York (The Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. (UCC) was formed in 1917 from the combination of four companies: Union Carbide Co. (incorporated 1898), Linde Air Products Co. (incorporated 1907), National Carbon Co., Inc. (incorporated 1899), and Prest-O-Lite Co., Inc. (incorporated 1913). The new entity was organized as a holding company, with its four members acting relatively autonomously and cooperating where their businesses converged. The oldest member of the quartet, Union Carbide, had been formed to manufacture calcium carbide. A by-product of alloying calcium carbide with aluminum was acetylene, a gas that company executives hoped would prove useful for street and household lighting. But when Thomas Edison's electric incandescent light bulbs proved more practical for most lighting, it looked as if Union Carbide's acetylene lighting business was obsolete. Luckily, a French researcher discovered that acetylene could be burned in oxygen to produce a hot, metal-cutting flame and a whole new market for the gas emerged. The company continued to manufacture calcium carbide at plants in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Niagara Falls, New York. In 1919, the company created Canadian subsidiaries of National Carbon Co. and Prest-O-Lite, and purchased a new headquarters at 42nd Street and Madison Avenue in New York City that served the company until the late 1970s. The company name was changed to Union Carbide Corporation in 1957 to reflect its reorganization from a holding company to a diversified corporation. By that time, Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation had established some 400 plants in the United States and Canada, in addition to overseas affiliates. Union Carbide Corporation became the world's largest producer of ethylene glycol, commonly used as antifreeze, and a leading manufacturer of the world's most widely used plastic, polyethylene. A massive disaster at Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, in December 1984 killed over 2,300 people and permanently injured another 10,000. Newsweek magazine called the incident "the worst industrial accident in history." The aftermath of the Bhopal accident sent the company into financial difficulties and in 2001, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical Corp.)

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