While lauded for his discoveries during his time, today his legacy is seen as far more mixed considering the serious negative environmental impacts of these innovations. One historian remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history.
Midgley tried hundreds of compounds to control engine knock. On December 9, , a chemist delivered a small amount of tetraethyl lead, or TEL, and when Midgley added the TEL to the fuel and started the one-cylinder test engine, the engine knock was gone.
The company's name was carefully chosen to avoid the use of the word "lead," but safeguards at the factory weren't as effective. Midgley himself did not hang around after inventing leaded petrol. Ever the tinkerer, he quickly moved on to other areas of investigation—and he still had his second catastrophic mistake to make. The goal was simple: to find a cheap, non-flammable, non-toxic substance that would do the same job as the current refrigerants.
Studying the chemical properties of known refrigerants, he quickly identified fluorine as a likely candidate, ideally in a compound with carbon to neutralize its toxic effects. And he pretty much nailed it out of the gate, as one of the initial substances his team created to test was dichlorodifluoromethane. Midgley demonstrated its safety to great acclaim at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, theatrically inhaling a lungful of it and using it to blow out a candle.
Non-toxic, non-flammable and an excellent refrigerant. They became known as chlorofluorocarbons—or, to use the common abbreviation, CFCs. The good news here is that this time humanity realized the problem before it could cause death on a massive scale. Leaded petrol was safe. Its inventor was sure of it. Facing sceptical reporters at a press conference in October , Thomas Midgley dramatically produced a container of tetraethyl lead - the additive in question - and washed his hands in it.
Midgley was - perhaps - being a little disingenuous. He had recently spent several months in Florida, recuperating from lead poisoning. Some of those who'd made Midgley's invention hadn't been so lucky, which is why reporters were interested. You can find more information about the programme's sources and listen online or subscribe to the programme podcast.
On the Thursday of the week before Midgley's press conference, at a Standard Oil plant in New Jersey, a worker named Ernest Oelgert started hallucinating. By Friday, he was running around the laboratory, screaming in terror. On Saturday, with Oelgert dangerously unhinged, his sister called the police.
He was taken to hospital and forcibly restrained. By Sunday, he was dead. Within the week, so were four of his colleagues - and 35 more were in hospital. None of this surprised workers elsewhere in Standard Oil's facility. They knew there was a problem with tetraethyl lead. Nor should it have shocked Standard Oil, General Motors or the DuPont Corporation, the three companies involved with adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline. The first production line in Ohio had already been shut down after two deaths.
A third plant elsewhere in New Jersey had also seen fatalities. Workers kept hallucinating insects - the lab was known as "the house of butterflies". Better working practices could make tetraethyl lead safe to produce.
But was it really sensible to add it to petrol, when the fumes would be belched out on to city streets? About a century ago, when General Motors had first proposed adding lead to petrol - in order to improve performance - scientists were alarmed. They urged the government to investigate the public health implications. Midgley breezily assured the surgeon general that "the average street will probably be so free from lead that it will be impossible to detect it or its absorption", although he conceded that "no actual experimental data has been taken".
In the ensuing decades, lead exposure resulted in a string of health maladies, particularly among children. One recent study hypothesized that increased lead exposure may have contributed to the mid century rise in crime. Starting in the s TEL was phased out and as of only produced in a few places in the world.
But lead contamination remains in areas where TEL-fueled vehicles were common. CFCs were developed to solve a long-standing problem with early refrigerators: they were extremely unsafe. Leaks of this gas killed families in their sleep. Midgley with a team of scientists undertook a search for a non-toxic, non-flammable refrigerant. In , they found a solution in dichlorodifluoromethane, which they sold under the brand name freon To demonstrate its safety, Midgley inhaled the stuff and blew out a candle.
Freon caught on and became ubiquitous in refrigerators, cooling units and aerosol spray cans as propellants. Lauded, Midgley won almost every prestigious award in his profession. Aside from TEL and freon, Midgley also held about other patents.
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