In 1896, at age 23, Ed Bader was hired as a machinist at the DuPont Company’s Hagley Powder Mills by Francis G. du Pont who “liked the look of Bader’s face,” earning 25 cents an hour for a 10-hour day that often lasted longer than that. During his career with DuPont, much of which was spent in the New Machine Shop, he manufactured many items including the first machine to produce powder pellets about the size of a big thumb, a glazing mill, a horizontal rolling mill using brass instead of zinc rollers, a steam traction engine, and a gas traction engine.1

In an interview conducted in 1956, Bader recounted some of his experiences in the New Machine Shop: "I built the gasoline locomotive. That was Alfred I. [du Pont]'s idea. I built it and operated it, and then went up through the Yards with it. We didn't have track enough to go everywhere. It weighed 11 tons; it had 2000 pounds of water. The water circulated through the jackets when it got warm. It had a cow-catcher. We caught a man standing in the door of the locomotive one day and pretty near killed him when we went in between trees. Its purpose was to pull the powder cars, instead of horses."2

1 The News Journal - February 9, 1963

2 Interview with Edward L. Bader, 1956 November 23 [transcript]. Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation interview transcripts on the history of the DuPont Company Powder Yard (Accession 2026). 1956-11-23. 2026_052113_03. Box 1, Manuscripts and Archives, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, DE 19807. Accessed 2025-12-14; https://digital.hagley.org/2026_052113_03.