DEWEY AND ALMY CHEMICAL CO.
Today we are celebrating Inventor’s Day with a look at two Cambridge inventors who founded the Dewey & Almy Chemical Co. on Harvey Street in North Cambridge: Bradley Dewey and Charles Almy.
Dewey and Almy met on their first day as freshman at Harvard in 1905. They remained friends throughout their years at Harvard and then at MIT, where they studied chemical engineering. After graduation, they went their separate ways until WWI found them assigned to the Chemical Warfare Service. There, both holding the rank of Colonel, they helped supervise the development and production of gas masks. Dewey was in charge of the Gas Production Defense Division, for which he received the Army Distinguished Service medal. Discharged from the army in 1919, the two men went into business together with an aim to provide chemical research that would lead to useful products for industry.
BRADLEY DEWEY
Bradley Dewey was born in Vermont in 1887, the son of Davis Rich Dewey (who became a Professor of Economics at MIT) and Mary Cornelia Hopkins. He received his Harvard B.A. (cum laude) in 1908 then went on to MIT, receiving his second bachelor’s degree, this time in chemical engineering, in 1909. After MIT and until the start of WWI, he worked for the American and Tin Plate company and U.S. Steel.
CHARLES ALMY
Charles Almy was born in 1888 to the Cambridge judge Charles Almy and Mary Ann Cummings. After receiving his A.B. in chemical engineering from Harvard in 1908, he became a research assistant in applied chemistry at MIT. He received his degree in chemical engineering from MIT in 1910. Following graduation, he worked for the American Vulcanized Fibre Co. of Wilmington, Delaware, and the Virginia Red Oil Products Corporation in Baltimore. After establishing Dewey & Almy, he moved away the chemical engineering aspects of the company to become its sales manager. He was described as “a quiet young man with a subdued but absorbing enthusiasm for his business.”
THE DEWEY & ALMY CHEMICAL COMPANY
Their efforts began in a tin shack at 235 Harvey Street in North Cambridge and, literally, at Dewey’s mother’s kitchen stove at 2 Berkeley Street.
Presaging future concerns about the site, neighbors were worried about the possible stink of “rendering grease” and reclaimed rubber, as well as acid production and “similar offensive operations” on the site. (Cambridge Chronicle, 16 August 1919)
Dewey & Almy developed gas masks, synthetic rubber, and rubber-based products, as well as fishing line, latex sealants, plastic bags, and adhesives. During their first decade, the chief product was a water-based compound useful for sealing tin cans and affixing their labels:
Later, recognizing the needs of the growing frozen foods industry, they developed latex films used for packaging grocery products. A 1939 Life Magazine featured a demonstration of “Cry-O-Vac,” their protective packaging for meats:
Developed by Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. of Cambridge, Massachusetts”
Another invention was an adhesive for gluing cork to the inside of bottle caps. One of their biggest hits was “Grippt,” which they advertised as “One adhesive for every use.” Grippit “cannot wrinkle paper” and is “clean … everlasting.” Smears and excess product “are easily cleaned off with the fingers without soiling them” (Cambridge Sentinel 9 April 1921).
Other products included:
“Multibestos” railroad car brake linings. (Multibestos is a form of asbestos.)
1943 Signal Corps, U. S. Army Balloon M-278A
“Darex” meteorological balloons
And then, amid all the chemical dispersants, latex and rubber vulcanizing cement, and safe-food packaging, came “Thickit” for use in whipping cream!
JERRY’S PIT
In 1942 Dewey & Almy purchased a lot immediately adjacent to Jerry’s Pit. Originally a 19th century clay pit for area brickworks (and probably named for the owner of the pit), the area had become a popular swimming hole. The following year the company donated $5,000 to the city to build bathhouses and toilets on the site, which it agreed to manage. This was no doubt in part to assuage community concerns over possible contaminants from the company. After the W.R. Grace Co. bought Dewey & Almy, these concerns eventually led to the closing of the swimming hole in 1961.
In 1944 Dewey & Almy received its second Army-Navy Production Award for meritorious services. Charles Almy noted, “This is a tribute to the men and women of our Cambridge plant…I am proud of their determined efforts.”
AFTERWARD
Dewey & Almy opened plants around the world, and the list of its inventions and products is long. In 1954 it was purchased by the W.R. Grace company, which expanded the site to include properties on Whittemore Avenue. After Grace emerged from bankruptcy in 2014, it spun off a separate company, GCP Applied Technologies, which now occupies the site.
During WWII, Bradley Dewey had become Federal Rubber Administrator. He received the medal of the Society of the Chemical Industry in 1944 and was awarded several honorary doctor degrees. He retired as president of Dewey & Almy in 1952 and became chair of the Board of Directors. In the mid-1950s, he formed the Bradley Container Corp., a joint venture with Olin Mathiesen for producing plastic food containers. He sold out to the American Can Company three years later. While in Cambridge he had served two terms on the Cambridge School Committee. He moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1968 and died there in 1974 at the age of 98.
Charles Almy died in 1954 at the age of 65. He had been a civic leader in Cambridge, on the Advisory Council of the Cambridge Civic Association, and a Trustee of the Foundation for Vision. He was a director of the Cambridge Trust Co; Vice President of the Cambridge Savings Bank; and President of the Corporation of the Brown & Nichols School, his alma mater. After his death, the Cambridge City Council passed a resolution “attesting to the inspiration and support which he brought to the public officials of Cambridge and to his contributions to the progress which the city has attained …”
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer, Kathleen Fox.
SOURCES
Cambridge Library digital newspapers online
American Stationer and Office Management Vol. 88, 1921
Cambridge Sentinel 11 June 1921
Canning Age, Vol. 3 1922
Newspapers.com
Genealogybank.com
