Thomas midgley bed
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Inventions through history have often made everyday tasks easier and some, like trains, the cotton gin, printing press, and computers, have been revolutionary. But other inventions have backfired and proven to be detrimental in the long run. Among those who contributed some of history’s most dangerous innovations was a bespectacled chemist from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.
Thomas Midgley, Jr. introduced the world to both leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), now considered two of the world’s most harmful chemical compounds. While Midgley won multiple prestigious awards during his lifetime, research in recent decades has shown how the compounds he developed for use in cars and refrigerators ended up ravaging the environment and poisoning people.
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Midgley, born on May 18, 1889, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University in 1911. In 1916, he joined General Motor’
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Digital Collections
Portrait of Thomas Midgley, Jr. (1889-1944), an American engineer and chemist who discovered the effectiveness of tetraethyl lead as an antiknock additive for gasoline.
Thomas Midgley, Jr. was born on May 18, 1889 in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He attended Cornell University, where he received a Master's of Engineering in 1908 and a PhD in mechanical engineering in 1911. After graduating from Cornell, Midgley went to work for Dr. Charles F. Kettering at the Dayton Engineering Lab (DELCo) in Ohio, where he was assigned to research why kerosene-fueled engines developed a knocking sound. Midgley subsequently identified ethyl iodide as an antiknock agent and, based on this research, became a pioneer in the study of internal combustion. In 1930, Midgley also researched safer alternatives to common refrigerant chemicals including ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide and ultimately identified dichlorodifluoromethane, or Freon-12, as an odour-free, nontoxic, and nonflammable refrigerant gas that could be used in residential r
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Today, an inventor transforms us. He also threatens our lives. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
You may recognize two lines from a political poem by James Russell Lowell: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth." So it is with some inventions. Meet Thomas Midgley. He gave us two ancient goods that've grown uncouth.
Born in 1889, Midgely did an engineering Ph.D. at Cornell. In 1916 he joined Charles Kettering's Lab in Dayton, Ohio.
Kettering was marketing a small kerosene engine to drive home-lighting systems on farms. It knocked horribly. Midgely guessed that dyeing the fuel red might cause it to absorb more heat and knock less. That was terrible physics. But when he doped the kerosene with iodine, there was less knock.
Midgely set out to find a better antiknock additive. First he wasted time with a hit-and-miss search. Then he began working systematically through the periodic table. After six years he found that tetrae
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