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Thomas Midgley Jr. (May 18, 1889 – November 2, 1944) was an American mechanical and chemical engineer.He played a major role in developing leaded gasoline (tetraethyl lead) and some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), better known in the United States by the brand name Freon; both products were later banned from common use due to their harmful impact on human health and the environment.
It was the mid-1970s, three decades after Midgley’s death, before the damage from his two inventions became publicly known. CFCs had punched a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica; if left ...
In his capacity as an engineer with General Motors, Thomas Midgley Jr. experimented with a myriad of different compounds, which he added to petrol in an attempt to prevent engines from knocking. Eventually, he discovered one compound that worked brilliantly: tetraethyllead .
Early research was led by A. H. Gibson and Harry Ricardo in England and Thomas Midgley Jr. and Thomas Boyd in the United States. The discovery that lead additives modified this behavior led to the widespread adoption of the practice in the 1920s and therefore more powerful higher compression engines.
For decades, most gas sold in the U.S. contained a lead additive. Per Magnus Persson via Getty ImagesOn the frosty morning of Dec. 9, 1921, in Dayton, Ohio, researchers at a General Motors lab ...
Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889–1944) was an American engineer and chemist who contracted polio at age 51, leaving him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. He became entangled in the ropes and died of strangulation at the age of 55.
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Ridgeleigh Terrace was the home of his son, Eugene, until his death. Eugene's wife, Virginia , lived in the house for many years, restoring and redecorating it. In the late 1990s, the house largely destroyed in a fire, and was rebuilt with serious deviation from the original blueprints to accommodate its current use as a conference center.