Drackett
| Fate | Sold to S. C. Johnson & Son |
|---|---|
| Successor | S. C. Johnson & Son |
| Founded | 1856 |
| Founder | Philip Drackett |
| Defunct | 1992 |
| Headquarters | TBA |
| Products | Windex, Vanish, Drano, Endust, Behold, Renuzit, Mr. Muscle, Miracle White, O-Cedar |
| Parent | Bristol-Myers Squibb |
The Drackett Company was a leading company in the specialty chemicals business during the 20th century, responsible for such products as Windex glass cleaner, Vanish toilet bowl cleaner, Drāno drain opener, Behold furniture polish, Endust dusting aid, Renuzit air freshener, Mr. Muscle oven cleaner, and Miracle White laundry products. They also produced the O-Cedar line of brooms, mops, sponges and scrubbers.
Philip Drackett, born to a Cleveland shipbuilding family in 1856, decided to cut his own swath, apprenticing to a pharmacist while in school, and opening his own Cleveland drugstore upon his marriage. He was fascinated by chemicals, though and eventually sold the drugstore, becoming a sales representative for drug supply houses, first in Chattanooga, Tennessee, then in Cincinnati. At the age of 54, his sons grown, he and his wife Sallie opened their own brokerage, providing chemicals with such items as soda ash, caustic soda, chlorinated lime, and denatured alcohol to janitor-supply companies, laundries, and other industrial users throughout the midwest, south and west.
He did well; five years later, his sons Harry and Philip Jr. were working for the firm, and instead of selling bulk chemicals, they were packaging them. During the 1920s, P. W. Drackett and Sons was the nation's largest manufacturer of medicinal quality epsom salts.
With an increasing number of homes incorporating indoor plumbing, Drackett saw a need for a good chemical drain opener. Clogs are largely caused by grease and hair going down the drain. Lye turns grease into soap, a process known as saponification, but in hard water, soap curdles, adding to the problem. One approach was to use concentrated nitric acid, or sulfuric acid. These attack both hair and soap curd, and generate heat as well, but they also attack metal pipes. Drackett used a mixture of dry lye crystals and aluminum pellets, producing much heat. When he used machined shards of aluminum instead of smooth aluminum beads, the sharp aluminum in churning mix physically would cut through most ordinary clogs, yet the aluminum was soft enough to not cut into metal pipes.
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