While studying for his degree, Herbert Henry Dow (1866-1930) became interested in developing more economical ways of extracting bromine from the underground brine reservoirs of Michigan in the United States. Dow, a man with a business acumen that matched his intellect, recognized that the use of bromine in medicine and the photographic industry meant there was a potential for massive profits. By 1889 he received his first patent for a new extraction process and immediately set up his own company, which went bankrupt within the year. Undeterred, Dow continued his investigations and by 1891 had patented the Dow Process. If a current is run through the brine, a process known as electrolysis, the negative bromide ions collect at the positive electrode, from where they can be collected.
Dow knew that he had to compete in the European market, where prices were controlled by a cartel of German companies called the Bromkonvention. Determined to make his mark, Dow ignored their rules and undercut them. The Bromkonvention responded by flooding the U.S. market with below-production-cost bromine in an attempt to put him out of business. However, they did not account for Dow's savvy nature; he hired English and German agents to buy the cut-price bromine and continued selling to the Europeans, undercutting their fixed prices. By the time Dow was found out, around four years later, there was little the Bromkonvention could do but invite him in.
Today the Dow chemical company is one of the largest in the world, and bromine production continues to grow, as do its uses, which include brominated flame retardants, dyes, agrichemicals, and pharmaceuticals, to name but a few.
