Continental Carbon Company started in 1936 with its first carbon black plant in Sunray, Texas. A second key event was the Nobel Prize winning discovery of Buckminsterfullerene (buckyballs) in 1985. That discovery seeded the Fullerene Nanotube industry.
As indicated in the visionary quote to the right, the real value would be in buckytubes and not buckyballs.
Working out of Rice University in Houston, Texas, Rick Smalley and colleagues laid the experimental ground work and intellectual property for a Carbon Nanotube industry. That industry was born with the creation of CNI in the year 2000. Another event was the creation of Nanopolaris and Unidym in 2005 to aggregate intellectual property and exploit value added opportunities in the inks and films market. Finally CCC acquired the Materials Business from Unidym resulting in the creation of CCNI.
