Ecolab, Inc., headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, is an American global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services to the food, energy, healthcare, industrial and hospitality markets. It was originally founded as Economics Laboratory in 1923 by Merritt J. Osborn, and renamed to Ecolab in 1986.HistoryEarly years : 1923 - 1950sMerritt J. "M.J." Osborn was a traveling salesman early in his career. While staying at hotels, he saw that guest room carpets were sent out for cleaning. Cleaning could take a week or more – and, while the carpet was away, the hotel closed the room, foregoing revenues.Years later, at age 44 and with two sons about ready for college, M.J. was in desperate need of a new business idea. He set about developing a product to clean guest carpets in the rooms. By cleaning the carpet in place in the morning, the room would be ready for guests that evening. M.J. called his product Absorbit and, in 1923, he formed a company and called it Economics Laboratory. Its tagline: “Saving time, lightening labor and reducing costs to those we serve.”Absorbit did not turn into the money-maker M.J. had hoped. But that didn’t stop him. He looked from the hotel room to the hotel kitchen, where electric dish machines were beginning to appear. M.J. foresaw human dishwashers being displaced by the machines. But at the time, there was a problem: The machines did a poor job of washing dishes, in large part because there were no effective dish machine soaps. M.J. saw the opportunity – and he worked to develop a better soap. The result was SOILAX. The earliest formulation of SOILAX may not have delivered perfect results. But it was the best option on the market. It was well received – and it provided the young company with more stable financial footing.During the 1930s, it expanded throughout the United States; and the sales reached US$5.4 million by the end of 1940s. It acquired the Magnus Company in the early 1950s, which gave the company access to Magnus's industrial specialty businesses - including pulp and paper, metalworking, transportation, and petrochemical processing.