[6] Hercules was one of the major producers of smokeless powder for warfare in the United States during the 20th century.

In 1911, the United States won a lawsuit that it had brought against the Du Pont corporation under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

Circuit Court in Delaware found that Du Pont had been operating an unlawful monopoly, and ordered a breakup of its explosives and gunpowder manufacturing business.

The Hercules Powder Co., once a small dynamite manufacturing firm, had begun producing rocket motors at its Bacchus Works south of the Magna community.

The growing availability of jobs was one factor encouraging subdivision development in the Magna, Kearns and West Valley areas.

Hercules Powder Company ranked 65th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

News reports at the time estimated at least fifteen buildings were destroyed along with twenty-five tons of explosives.

In 2009, rapper George Watsky released a song about the history of the company called "Hercules".

Some of the more recent gunpowders marketed to reloaders include the brand names "Bullseye", "2400", "Reloder", "Unique", and "Red Dot".

In the 1920s, Hercules entered the pine resin products business, a development which followed upon the faster clearing of forests for lumber and farmland, especially in the southeast U.S., around the time of the First World War.

The increasing surplus of wood pulp led the company to the idea of producing other things from it, namely, the various chemicals that were present in pine resin.

They set up production sites such as the one in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Brunswick, Georgia for this express purpose, and added to their raw supply by offering to take or buy tree stumps from farmers.

Beginning in 1959, Hercules, Inc., began to diversify into the production of large solid-propellant rocket motors, and it soon became a primary producer of these, especially for the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Army – and to a lesser degree for the civilian National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The site of Air Force Plant 81 is the subject of a Utah Division of Environmental Response and Remediation assessment.

[28] In 1995 the aerospace division of Hercules, including its solid motor line, was acquired by the American defense contractor ATK.

[29] Aqualon produces products for physical property modification of aqueous systems which are sold into a wide variety of industries including personal care, food additives, and construction.

These products include functional, process, and water treatment chemicals for a wide variety of pulp and paper applications.

Basis of AKD -technology Hercules acquired more or less voluntary from German BASF after the Second World War.

Ventures produces specialty chemicals for a variety of markets, including adhesives and sealants, paints, inks, coatings, lubricants, rubber, plastics, and building and construction.

Hercules Incorporated, in collaboration with Professor Kaichang Li of Oregon State University and Columbia Forest Products, received a 2007 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for the Greener Synthetic Pathways category in developing and commercializing a formaldehyde-free adhesive made from soy flour and Hercules' unique polymer chemistries.