Thomas Midgley
Thomas Midgley was an American engineer, chemist, and inventor who over the course of his lifetime was awarded over 100 patents. Midgley worked for most of his career at the Dayton Research Laboratories, which later became the Dayton Electronics Laboratories (Delco), under inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur Charles F. Kettering. The Dayton Research Laboratories was a subsidiary of the General Motors Corporation.
Midgley gained fame beginning in the late 1960s, when it became apparent that lead in the air was largely the result of automobile exhaust emissions, created from burning leaded gasoline. In the early 1920s, Midgley was tasked with finding a way to cure the common knocking created by the internal combustion engine, and he discovered that the addition of tetraethyl lead to gasoline prevented engine knock. Midgley and Kettering received a patent for the fuel additive, which they called simply Ethyl, and Midgley took an extended vacation shortly after to cure himself of lead poisoning. Leaded gasoline remained in common use for over five decades.
Midgley further contributed to the well-being of the earth and its people when he was assigned to a team to work with GM’s Frigidaire division on a better compound to be used for air conditioning and refrigeration. Refrigerants of the time were usually ammonia, propane, or chloromethane-based. All were toxic, they could explode or cause fires if leaked and a safer alternative was in demand. Midgley’s team developed what they called Freon, the first chlorofluorocarbon, or CFC. CFC’s damage to the earth’s ozone layer would be discovered decades later.
For his work Midgley was granted, in addition to his many patents, numerous awards and recognition, including the Priestly Medal, the highest recognition of the American Chemical Society. In 1940 the inventor contracted polio, at the time a disease for which there was no vaccination and no cure. Midgley recovered from the initial onset of the disease but was disabled. He was 51 at the time.
Wanting to retain some form of independence, the inventor designed and had built a system of cables and pulleys over his bed which would allow him to pull himself out of bed unaided. This system worked for a time, but in November of 1944 Midgley accidentally became entangled in the cables and while struggling to get free he strangled himself with his invention. He was 55 at the time of his death.