American Cyanamid
American Cyanamid Company was an American manufacturing conglomerate. It began as a fertilizer company and added many additional lines of business before merging with American Home Products in 1994. The combined company sold off most of its divisions, adopted the name of its remaining Wyeth division, and was bought by Pfizer in 2009, becoming defunct as a separate concern. History The company was founded by engineers Frank S. Washburn and Charles H. Baker in New York City in 1907, to capitalize on a German patent they had licensed for the manufacture of nitrogen products for fertilizer. The company's name is derived from the chemical calcium cyanamide, the fertilizer they would manufacture. They soon set up headquarters in Nashville, investing a million dollars in several corporations underpinning the manufacturing operation to be set up in nearby Muscle Shoals, Alabama (sometimes called Mussel Shoals), 120 miles from Nashville, on the Tennessee River. These planned operations included an electric power generating company (Mussel Shoals Hydro-electric) a utility company to distribute the electricity that would power the chemical plant, and the Cyanamid manufacturing plant. Washburn was President and located in Nashville, while Baker was Vice President and remained in New York. Cynamide plants were also planned for Niagara Falls, Ontario and Georgia. By 1908 the company was incorporated in Maine. The Canadian plant was the first in operation in 1910, and was to be followed by the Alabama plant. However, the development of United States manufacturing was suspended when they were denied the construction of a dam for the hydroelectric generation station. Instead, United States offices of the company imported product from its Canadian plant. The company abandoned its Nashville headquarters in 1915 and relocated them to New York City. At the same time, it was trying to raise political support, both grass-roots and via lobbying, to implement the Alabama power generation plan, and as it began to face competition for the American market. In 1917, Cyanamid purchased the Ammo-Phosphate Corporation, which owned a fertilizer plant in Linden, New Jersey manufacturing ammonium phosphate. During World War I, the company shifted its nitrogen production from fertilizer to explosives. With offers of free use of patents and processes, along with personnel and equipment, it enticed the United States government to approve and pay for its original plans for the Alabama plant, with some modifications, to help with the war effort. A separate company, the Air Nitrates Corporation, was set up for this government contract to build and operate the plant for the duration of the war, with Cyanamid earning some fees and to later inherit the plant for the fertilizer business. This raised concerns of cronyism, but the critics were outnumbered by local supporters in Congress. However, when the war ended, the first stage of the plant had only just begun limited production. A few months later, the Justice Department began an investigation into the contract and possible graft. Washburn died October 9, 1922. At the time, the government still owned the Muscle Shoals plants. A