Founded by Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber in 1913, Formica Insulation Company is now the world's largest manufacturer of high-pressure laminate for use in residential and commercial building, and the trade name Formica is virtually synonymous with decorative laminate.

O'Conor and Faber had worked at Westinghouse since 1907, the same year that Leo Baekeland invented Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic, which he patented in 1910. That same year O'Conor at Westinghouse produced the first sheet of laminate by coating kraft paper with liquid Bakelite and then pressing it flat. O'Conor recognized the potential of the laminate as an insulating material. In 1913 Westinghouse applied for a patent for the process, which was granted in 1918. O'Conor and his associate Faber left Westinghouse in 1913 convinced that the new product had greater potential than was recognized by Westinghouse. They incorporated and established the Formica Insulation company in Cincinnati, and the partners saw the material entirely in industrial terms. Early clients included the Chalmers Motor Company, Ideal (later Delco) Electronics, Bell Electric Motor, Kellogg Switchboard, Cutler-Hammer, and Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing. Initially the company produced laminate using licensed Bakelite; later, when blocked by Westinghouse, they used Redmanol, a product developed by chemist L.V. Redman. From 1917 until 1922 Formica was the subject of almost continual litigation over patent infringement, but these cases ended when many of the competing litigants merged to form the Bakelite Corporation, which thereafter supplied the Formica Company.

Throughout the 1920s Formica was used increasingly for consumer products, especially appliances. In 1927 Formica patented a multilayer lithographed wood grain laminate on a flat-bed press leading to Formica's development of decorative laminate. In 1931 the company received more patents for an all-paper laminate and for a process to make its laminates cigarette-burn resistant. These changes led to increased consumer use and popularity of the material for public countertops, for which it became widely used in art deco design. In the early 1930s, Formica researcher Jack Cochrane developed a laminate that used urea instead of phenol to coat the top layer of kraft paper, which was then laminated under pressure to the phenol-impregnated pages underneath. This change, and a subsequent shift from urea to melamine, made Formica laminate easy to clean, fire resistant, durable, and available in dozens of colors. This configuration — seven layers of kraft paper impregnated with phenol-formaldehyde resin with the top decorative layer coated with melamine and then topped with an opaque sheet of melamine — allowed light colors to be used, and brought costs down. This is the Formica that became a ubiquitous American building material in the 1950s and 1960s, defining among other things the America diner style.

In 1956 the company was bought by American Cyanamid, and its name was changed to Formica Corporation as it became a subsidiary of the conglomerate. American Cyanamid sold Formica in 1984, and the company has since gone through many permutations as a publicly held and a private company. In 2007 it was acquired by Fletcher Building Limited of New Zealand. While no longer the industry leader, Formica Corporation remains a strong and reliable producer of many laminate products. Today, Formica products are available in a wide variety of colors, textures, and patterns, for countertops, cabinets, and furniture, in the United States and internationally. The company maintains factories in England, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, and Taiwan.

See: http://www.formica.com/ http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Formica-Corporation-Company-History.html Grant Lewin, Susan, ed., Formica & Design: From the Counter Top to High Art, New York: Rizzoli, 1991, p. 191.