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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 ...
Charles Franklin Kettering (August 29, 1876 – November 25, 1958) sometimes known as Charles Fredrick Kettering [1] was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. [2]
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 .
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 ...
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.
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The "low percentage" solution ultimately led to the discovery of tetraethyllead (TEL) in December 1921, a product of the research of Midgley and Boyd and the defining component of leaded gasoline. This innovation started a cycle of improvements in fuel efficiency that coincided with the large-scale development of oil refining to provide more ...