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www.mybaycity.com December 25, 2005
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Stock of Bay City Carbon Firm in 1940s Quickly Skied from $100 to $18,000

George Sermon's Role in Atomic Bomb Production Still Unclear

December 25, 2005       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Officers of Ultra Carbon Corp., sucessor of United Carbon Products, were, standing, from left, Gene Musinski, office manager; Del Hughes, secretary-treasurer; T.J. Lescelius, engineer; seates, Weston Sheldon, vice president, and George Sermon, president.
 

Bay City's history of high tech entrepreneurship is an important part of our history that is still coming into focus and could help economic developers chart a course for the future.

Ned Brandt, former public relations director of The Dow Chemical Company and Dow's official historian, has helped fill in some of the gaps in one important enterprise: United Carbon Products, a Bay City firm that pioneered carbon purification.

This firm was headed by former Dow employees who may have had a hand in producing purified carbon vital to production of the atomic bomb. Verification of that connection is still being sought although secrecy still clouds some aspects of the history of the bomb.

In response to a MyBayCity.com article Aug. 14, 2005, entitled "Atomic energy Contract Put Bay City Firm in Graphite Purification Business," Mr. Brandt has forwarded some archival information about the founders of the firm.


The information is drawn from a chapter on x-ray and spectroscopy laboratory in the publication "Dow Research Pioneers, 1888-1949," by Robert S. Karpiuk, published in 1984 by Dow.

"One development from the X-Ray Laboratory involved twopeople, Lynn Brooks and George Sermon. It showed the entrepreneurial spirit of these two people.

"Lynn A. Brooks, a Midland native, attended Bay City JuniorCollege in 1929 through 1933 and one year at the University of Michigan. He worked intermittently at Dow while pursuing his educational studies. In 1934, he joined the X-Ray and Spectroscopy Laboratory as a laboratory assistant, and in 1940 was promoted to assistant chemist. In 1941, he also became a member of the Magnesium Laboratory.

"George Sermon attended Bay City Junior College for threeyears and joined the X-Ray Laboratory in early 1937 as a laboratorytechnician. As a member of the Magnesium Laboratory, he was promoted to research and development engineer in 1943.

"An essential requirement for emission spectrographicanalysis was pure graphite electrodes, which were not commerciallyavailable. As a necessity, George Sermon worked out a technique forpurifying graphite spectrographic electrodes which removed all of theelements which might interfere with spark analyses for specific elements.

"The production of pure graphite grew into a low volume business by Dow standards so Lynn Brooks got permission to leave Dow in 1945 and set up a plant in Bay City to make and sell the purified electrodes. He formed a closed corporation and sold stock in the venture for $100 per share, giving his friends in the Laboratory all a 'glorious chance' to get in on the ground floor. There were few takers because there did not seem to be any great chancefor any payoff in the future.

"George Sermon also left Dow in 1947 to take part in the newcompany which became United Carbon Products. They had the technologyrequired to purify graphite blocks needed for the construction of atomic'piles' and so the business grew very rapidly until each share of stock was worth about $18,000! George Sermon ended up as president of United Carbon and then retired to devote full time to important personal pastimes."

The untold aspect of the story is whether Dow sold any of the purified graphite produced by Brooks and Sermon to the Atomic Energy Commission for use in the atomic bomb.

It seems likely that Dow may have supplied Enrico Fermi, who produced the world's first chain reaction using 400 tons of graphite layered with uranium and cadmium in a squash court at the University of Chicago.

If so, the founders of the Bay City firm had a vital part in history, albeit one with a terrible outcome -- the destruction of two Japanese cities and deaths and maiming of hundreds of thousands of people. The end result of the project, however, was the end of World War II which may have saved many thousands of other lives.

A successor firm to Ultra Carbon, Carbone of America Ultra Carbon Division, has announced plans to add about 12,500 square feet of factory space and increase employment by 10-15.

The firm will add to its high temperature coatings section and a "clean" room for production of ultra pure graphite products for the electronics industry. Carbone's factory is at 900 Harrison. It is a subsidiary of Carbone Lorraine of France, which bought the local company in 1990.

The Bay City Carbone plant supplies Dow Corning Corporation's Hemlock Semiconductor facility that is investing $400-500 million in additional production space and adding about 150 jobs.###

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

More from Dave Rogers

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