Walter S. Carpenter’s Interview
Walter Samuel Carpenter, Jr. was a corporate executive at DuPont who oversaw the company’s involvement in the Manhattan Project. In 1919, at the age of thirty-one, Carpenter was elected to DuPont’s board of directors, the first member who was not from the du Pont family. Carpenter discusses how DuPont came to be involved in the Manhattan Project, and how Groves’ initial request seemed to be an almost impossible task. He also discusses the expansion of the American chemical business and the corporate structure of DuPont. Additionally, he touches upon his early life and how he initially got involved with the company after quitting school in the fall of his senior year at Cornell University to manage DuPont’s Chilean nitrate interests.