General Paint history

Two years later, the National Barium Co. and St Louis Lithophone Co. were added to the roster of companies, and in 1927 Glidden formed the California Zinc Co. and Afterthought Zinc Mining Co.

The purchase of Durkee & Co., a leading manufacturer of salad dressings, meat sauces, pickles, spices, and condiments, for $1.8 million in mid-1929 precipitated a name change for Glidden's food subsidiary to Durkee Famous Foods, Inc.

In the meantime, Glidden's Chemical & Pigment business continued to grow, via the 1932 acquisition of Nelio-Resin Corp., manufacturer of a patented combination of turpentine and resin.

A joint venture with Metal & Thermit Corp. of New York to form American Zirconium Corp. in 1933 further enhanced these operations.

Glidden also branched out into the soybean business, building a soybean oil extraction plant in Chicago in 1934.

All of Durkee's assets were later acquired by Glidden in 1936, when the subsidiary became a division.

In 1938 Glidden was able to reorganize Holland Mills as a division, but just one year later, the plant was destroyed by fire.

The company emerged from the Great Depression with $50.17 million in sales and $1.73 million in net income in 1940.

In 1948 Glidden revolutionized the consumer paint industry with the introduction of its first water-borne latex paint, Spred Satin.

Paint sales drove Glidden's sales to $188.61 million in 1950.

Glidden organized a new subsidiary, Glidden International C.A., in Venezuela in 1955 to license, manufacture, and distribute the company's products outside the United States and Canada.

In 1958, Glidden sold its soybean processing and grain merchandising operations to Central Soya Co., Inc., for $3.76 million, and acquired R.C. Pauli & Sons, a bulk spice processor based in San Francisco.

Sutcliffe graduated from the University of Kansas in 1965.

But before the deal was completed, SCM also had to swap debt for new stock offered in the fall of 1967 in order to buy back Greatamerica's 2.1 million Glidden shares.

Glidden's ten years of research had resulted in a coating that one technician called "Saran Wrap for steel" in a June 1988 Chemical Week article.

Since 1990, the overall responsibility for implementing the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 rests with the EPA, which began a major effort to control VOC emissions.

In 1991, Glidden doubled its media budget to $12 million in the hopes of increasing its number-one share of the consumer market from 13.6 percent.

A spokesman for the Saxon Paint Company said that in 1992, the California marine market sales for linear polyurethane coatings was $5 million.

Spred 2000--and its professional counterpart, Lifemaster 2000--a virtually odorless paint with no petroleum-based solvents or volatile organic compounds, was the first paint of its kind to be offered in the United States.