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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.
Added to gasoline, it solved one of the biggest problems the automotive industry faced at the time — engine knocking, or tiny explosions in car engines due to the low quality of gasoline that ...
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 ...
The mixture known as gasoline or petrol, when used in high compression internal combustion engines, has a tendency to knock (also called "pinging" or "pinking") and/or to ignite early before the correctly timed spark occurs (pre-ignition, refer to engine knocking).
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 .
Founded in 1923, [4] [5] Ethyl Corp was formed by General Motors and Standard Oil of New Jersey ().General Motors had the "use patent" for tetraethyllead (TEL) as an antiknock, based on the work of Thomas Midgley Jr., Charles Kettering, and later Charles Allen Thomas, [6]: 340–41 and Esso had the patent for the manufacture of TEL.
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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.