BY THE time of his death in 1944, Thomas Midgley Jr was regarded as one of the great inventors of the 20th century. From cars to kitchens, his creations ran the gamut. He had turned Henry Ford鈥檚 鈥渂angers鈥� into speedy, must-have Cadillacs with a magic ingredient added to petrol, and for an encore found a chemical that made killer refrigerators and aircon units safe for millions of homes.
On the face of it, an enviable legacy 鈥� except that the products of Midgley鈥檚 genius were fatally flawed. His lead-based petrol additive damaged the developing brains of millions of children globally; and Freon, the first CFC, almost destroyed Earth鈥檚 ozone layer. Midgley is now seen as the world鈥檚 worst inventor.
Born in 1889, Midgley鈥檚 first claimed invention 鈥� made in high school 鈥� was a method for curving the flight of baseballs, by rubbing them with the chewed bark of the slippery elm. It was widely used thereafter by baseball pitchers. Later, after a stint working for his father鈥檚 tyre development company, Midgley came under the wing of , the inventor of the electric starter motor for cars. In 1916, Kettering set 27-year-old Midgley to work on a solution to the problem of car engine 鈥渒nock鈥�.
Advertisement
Caused by the badly timed ignition of fuel, knock was noisy, jolting and effectively prevented the use of more efficient higher-octane fuel. It probably led to early automobiles being dubbed 鈥渙ld bangers鈥�. Midgley came up with no fewer than 143 fuel additives to deal with knock. The initial front runner was ethyl alcohol, made from grain. But to Kettering and the paymasters at General Motors, he backed a different contender: tetraethyl lead (TEL), a compound first discovered in the 1850s and known to be highly poisonous.
So why choose it? Midgley always said it was simply the most practical solution. It was cheap to make, and just a couple of grams in a gallon of fuel was enough to prevent knocking, compared with the 10 per cent dose required for ethyl alcohol. And there was a key difference between the two: TEL was patentable. Midgley calculated GM could make . In those days, health and safety regulation was at a minimum and within 15 months of his advocating TEL, the first fuel containing the magic anti-knock ingredient was being pumped on forecourts.
From the start, medical researchers warned that it could poison the nation. In early 1923, William Clark at the US Public 91色情片 Service predicted that lead oxide dust would build up along busy roads. The following year, toxicologist Yandell Henderson of Yale University prophetically warned that 鈥渢he development of lead poisoning will come on so insidiously that leaded gasoline will be in nearly universal use鈥� before the public and the government awaken to the situation.鈥�
Midgley was having none of it, even when several workers exposed to TEL fumes at the manufacturing plant died in 1924. Others suffered bouts of violent paranoia and were . Midgley was a canny salesman, and insisted they marketed TEL as 鈥淓thyl鈥�, with no reference to lead. He claimed there were no substitutes, when he knew better than anyone how numerous they were. Journalists asked questions about the workers鈥� deaths, but Midgley responded with showmanship, rubbing TEL on his hands and holding a bottle under his nose, proclaiming 鈥淚 am not taking any chances whatever鈥�. He knew that was a lie. In early 1923, just before GM installed him as vice-president of Ethyl Corporation, the firm producing TEL, he had taken weeks off work because 鈥渁fter about a year鈥檚 work with organic lead, I find that my lungs have been affected.鈥�
Lethal or not, TEL transformed motoring. Engines could run with much higher compression in their cylinders, producing markedly more power. Soon, all over the US, old bangers were replaced by the likes of sleek, powerful and knock-free GM Cadillacs. The American dream was on a roll.
By 1945, the whole world was driving on leaded fuel. And the science had been hijacked by a web of corporate-funded denialists. For the four decades from 1925, almost all the research into possible health effects of TEL was conducted by employees and contractors of the Ethyl Corporation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, it got a clean bill of health.
Meanwhile, Midgley had gone back to the lab. In 1930, working with Kettering for GM鈥檚 Frigidaire subsidiary, he set out to solve another problem holding back a growing industry. Most refrigerators at the time were industrial units dependent on fluids that were poisonous or apt to catch fire, such as methyl chloride, sulphur dioxide and ammonia. These were no good for Frigidaire, which wanted to put a refrigerator in every home and an air conditioner in every office.
Midgley swiftly found a safe, synthetic alternative, called dichlorodifluoromethane, which he branded Freon. It was the world鈥檚 first CFC. According to Kettering, it was 鈥渉ighly stable, non-inflammable and altogether without harmful effects on man or animals鈥�. Like TEL, it was also patentable. Frigidaire introduced it to public fanfare in April 1930. Domestic refrigeration never looked back.
During the second world war, Freon was an ideal propellant for spraying insect repellents such as DDT during jungle warfare. That led to household aerosols such as antiperspirants. By the 1970s, as much as a million tonnes were being released into the air annually.
Midgley was a hero among American chemists, winning all the prizes and securing over a hundred patents. Then, in 1940, he caught polio, which left him weak and unable to get around. True to form, he invented a system of pulleys and ropes to hoist him from his bed to his wheelchair.
However, the disease took a big toll on Midgley, and within a few years he knew his time was past. As president of the American Chemical Society, he gave a lecture in 1944 that ended in verse: 鈥淲hen I鈥檓 gone, I have no regrets to offer鈥� let this epitaph be graven on my tomb in simple style, this one did a lot of living in a mighty little while.鈥� A month later, in November 1944, he was found suspended above his bed, strangled by his hoist.
Obituaries, and a recent biography by his grandson, all call his death a tragic mishap. The media have jumped on this idea, relishing the narrative that a man whose inventions led to such harm was ultimately undone by his own ingenuity. But a colleague called to the scene said it was 鈥渘o accident鈥�, and Midgley鈥檚 death certificate and cemetery records called it suicide.
鈥淲orkers suffered bouts of violent paranoia and were hauled away in straitjackets鈥�
The master inventor was long gone before his creations lost their lustre. It wasn鈥檛 until the 1970s that Freon鈥檚 ozone-destroying properties were pinned down. And then, with some 75 trillion litres of leaded gasoline burned, science woke from its amnesia about the dangers of lead. The turning point came with studies into impaired child development by psychiatrist Herbert Needleman at the University of Pittsburgh, based just a few miles from Midgley鈥檚 childhood home.
Thankfully, the world Midgley made is receding. Levels of lead in the blood of children across the US and in most of the world鈥檚 cities have declined by more than two-thirds since the widespread banning of leaded petrol. Only a handful of countries continue to sell the stuff. And the 1987 Montreal Protocol was the beginning of the end for Freon. Today, our protective ozone layer is slowly recovering 鈥� leading to fewer deaths from skin cancer as our exposure to ultraviolet radiation returns to its previous level.
As legacies go, environmental historian John McNeill offered one of the most chilling epitaphs: Midgley had 鈥渕ore impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth鈥檚 history鈥�. Nothing to envy there.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he one-man environmental disaster鈥�
