The Nixon Nitration Works is best known for the terrible explosion of March 1, 1924 which destroyed forty buildings and killed twenty people at the company's New Jersey facility on the Raritan River, in what was then Nixon and has since been re-named Edison, near New Brunswick.

The company was founded by renowned naval architect Lewis Nixon in 1915 to manufacture cellulose nitrate, used in the production of celluloid and other early plastics. The nitrate made the material highly flammable, but at the works cellulose nitrate was maintained in large sheets and had been piled in buildings. Within the works, Nixon leased a building to the Ammonite Company which was salvaging the contents of artillery shells for use as agriculture fertilizer. When the Ammonite building exploded, the shock was felt and the sound heard as far away as Manhattan and Brooklyn. After the initial explosion massive fires spread to others buildings.

The Nixon Nitration Works rebuilt on the site of the disaster, and returned to the business of cellulose nitrate manufacturing. Nixon produced a full line of transparent sheeting for use in making packages, containers, displays, etc., and a full line of acetate plastics for use by fabricators and manufacturers of plastic parts and products. Nixonoid, the company's trade name material, was available in a full range of colors, mottles and patterns in sheets, rods and tubes. A full page ad for Nixon Nitration Works in the June 1937 Modern Plastics promoted lampshades, "one of the many uses of Nixon Plastics...Nixon Lampshade Acetate material (Nixonite) is slow burning, easily sewed and pasted. It is not affected by temperature changes. Obtainable in a variety of beautiful colors – mottled and plain."

Company founder Lewis Nixon died on September 23, 1940. He was succeeded by his son Stanhope Nixon who in the year following World War II was unable to make the company competitive in the new post-nitrate plastics industry. In 1951, the company downsized and donated 48 acres of land and a dam to the city of New Brunswick. The site of the Nixon Works is now a part of Middlesex County College and the Raritan Center Industrial Park.

See:

"1924 Nixon Nitration Works disaster", Wikipedia

Adverstisement, Modern Plastics (March 1950), 12