Chicago physician Wallace C. Abbott founded the Abbott Alkoloidal Co. in 1900. Abbott's experiments with the manufacture of alkaloid drugs and antiseptics proved successful, and the company's annual sales rose from about $200,000 in 1905 to $2 million by 1923. Renamed Abbott Laboratories in 1915, in 1920 the company moved to a new headquarters in North Chicago. In the mid-1930s, Abbott employed about 750 men and women in the Chicago area. Sales of anesthetics such as “Nembutal” and “Pentothal” drove annual sales up to $12 million by 1939. The company continued to grow during World War II, when it was one of the first mass-producers of penicillin. After the war, annual sales grew from about $100 million in the mid-1950s to $1 billion in the 1970s. The company built new headquarters in Abbott Park (in Lake County) during the 1960s. As Abbott continued to expand, the number of its Chicago-area employees grew from about 1,400 in the mid-1970s to roughly 10,000 by the late 1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s, the company pioneered blood tests for HIV, as well as drugs designed to combat AIDS; it also made a variety of other drugs and products, including infant formula. By 2002, Abbott's annual sales exceeded $16 billion and it employed roughly 17,000 Chicago-area residents, accounting for slightly less than a quarter of its global workforce.

This entry is part of the Encyclopedia's Dictionary of Leading Chicago Businesses (1820-2000) that was prepared by Mark R. Wilson, with additional contributions from Stephen R. Porter and Janice L. Reiff.