Duriron Company

The Duriron Company was founded in 1912 by a Dayton foundryman, Pierce D. Schenk, and two associates, J. Richman Pitman, a DuPont explosives production engineer and William F. Hall, a New York Financier. The company derives its name from a high silicon cast iron alloy, Duriron, which rapidly became an industry standard for handling extremely corrosive materials. Duriron "denitrating towers" were in high demand during the First World War for safe handling of hot mixtures of Nitric and Sulfuric acids during the manufacturing of explosives. As a result of the war the company expanded tenfold, increasing its work force from 150 to 1500.

During the 1920s and 30s, Duriron faced a major readjustment period since "denitrating towers" used in the war effort were no longer in demand. The readjustment included the development of a line of more "off the shelf" Duriron pumps and valves for use in the broad chemical process industries. The breadth of alloys in which pumps and valves were offered was also greatly expanded to include a variety of nickel based alloys, one of which, Durimet-20 (a joint development and patent of Ohio State and Duriron), was to become a world standard for handling certain difficult chemicals. The redirection of the company would begin to reap great returns in the 1940s as Duriron's products became more widely accepted. During World War II, two thirds of Duriron's production was devoted to providing pumps and valves for production of Plutonium and Uranium for the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb. The company won the prestigious Army/Navy "E" award for these efforts. Duriron became a publicly traded company in 1946.

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