The substantial contribution to process safety made by the United Kingdom company, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), is described and followed by a discussion of the following: The reasons why ICI produced more new process safety ideas than other companies. If ICI had never existed, would the same new ideas still have been produced? If ICI still existed in its old form, what new ideas might it have been producing now? The reasons for ICI's decline and fall, and their similarity to process accidents. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.