The Unfortunate Inventor

The American Doctor Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889 –1944) was a mechanical engineer and chemist; he was also an inventor, but not a very good one in the end.

Whilst working for a subsidiary of General Motors in 1911, Midgley discovered that the addition of Tetraethyllead to gasoline prevented "knocking" in internal combustion engines. But instead of saying that lead was being added to petrol, the company decided to call the additive "Ethyl".

Then in 1923, Midgley had to take a bit of a holiday because he had lead poisoning. Luckily,  Midgley was a grown man, because developing children who are exposed to lead are often cognitively impaired, with lower intelligence, exhibiting aggressive behaviour, because lead competes with calcium in the cell, which is very important for brain development.

Interestingly, the lead-crime hypothesis proposes that the decrease in crime in America that began in the mid-1990s and continues today, may be due to lead being removed from petrol.

After this, Midgley was involved in the invention of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), called Freon. This substance was used refrigerators, inhalers and aerosol spray cans. Later we found out that these type of gases have depleted the ozone layer and contributed to the greenhouse effect, which is impacting natural ecosystems and biodiversity and a factor behind climate change.

These two inventions have now been banned. J. R. McNeill, an environmental historian expressed the opinion that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."

Midgley died in 1944 when he became entangled in one of his own inventions, which he had created after polio left him disabled. The system of strings and pulleys that he devised to help others lift him from bed, strangled him. At least he tried.


Books To Read

Mistakes That Worked: 40 Familiar Inventions & 40 Familiar Inventions & How They Came to Be, by Charlotte Foltz Jones.