The Most Dangerous Inventor You’ve Never Heard Of
When does innovation cross the line between brilliance and catastrophe? Alfred Nobel comes to mind with his invention of dynamite and subsequent endowment of the Nobel Prizes. But few men have affected Earth’s atmosphere more than inventor Thomas Midgley Jr. – and he did it twice.
Today’s Radicals, Renegades, and Rebels entry profiles an American engineer and chemist whose innovations solved two major problems of his day. In so doing, Midgley created new ones for generations to come.
The Problem Solver: Early Life and Career
Thomas Midgley Jr. was born in 1889 in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and joined General Motors in 1916 under the leadership of Charles Kettering. Midgley had a relentless curiosity and a confidence in the ability of science to fix anything. He gained early success and a rising reputation as an inventor and technical miracle worker.
For a bit of context, the opening of Downton Abbey happens in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic. We’re just a few years from the onset of World War I. Violet is still unaccustomed to electric lighting, and the telephone will be installed in the coming episodes. It’s a couple of decades past the Gilded Age, but that era of innovation and progress enabled the possibilities that fueled this time.
The First Invention: Tetraethyl Lead (Ethyl Gasoline, or “Leaded” Gasoline)
It was also the early days of passenger automobiles, relatively speaking. The engines knocked terribly, making them inefficient and causing wear on the parts. Kettering assigned Midgley to find a solution to the problem. General Motors wanted to produce vehicles that had more power, better fuel economy, and would be, as a result, more competitive. Midgley’s team tested thousands of compounds, ran systematic experiments, and tracked stability, cost, toxicity, and manufacturability of each compound. In December of 1921, he tested tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive, and the knocking disappeared – exactly as the company had hoped. In 1923, General Motors and Standard Oil marketed it as “Ethyl” gasoline.
Unfortunately, this breakthrough had a hidden – and extended – cost. At highest risk were workers directly in the fuel refining process, but lead poisoning was a risk for employees at distribution and storage facilities as well. The risk was lower, but not nonexistent, for auto plant workers and anyone who had to breathe the exhaust from cars burning leaded gasoline.
Leaded gas is also responsible for one of the most far-reaching ecological disasters of the 20th century. It occurred slowly, quietly, and ubiquitously. Every vehicle running on leaded gas released lead particles, lead oxides, and lead halides into the air. These particles eventually settled into soil, waterways, and dust in homes. Lead doesn’t break down, so the contamination continued for decades. Soil near areas of concentrated exhaust (roadways, intersections, and gas stations, for example) still contains elevated lead levels. Plants and animals ingested lead directly and indirectly. That means you and I ingested it as well.
The Second Invention: Freon and the Birth of the Modern Comfort Age
The existing refrigerants during Midgley’s time were toxic or explosive – not what you want around your food or your home. Midgley was still working for General Motors, which partnered with DuPont to work toward better refrigerants to help expand the home appliance market, primarily for refrigerators and freezers. In the early 1930s, home refrigeration was available, but it was dangerous and unreliable, and as a result, it wasn’t popular. Midgley put on his inventor’s cap and brought us a solution. Chlorofluorocarbons, branded as Freon, created safer, more reliable, and more affordable cooling. Refrigerators for home use became commonplace by 1940, and deep freezers found traction by the 1950s. Central air conditioning hit luxury hotels and office buildings in the 1930s, but it wasn’t the norm in new housing units until the 1970s.
Despite the major historical controversy as to the hazards posed by Freon, it is now settled science. CFCs destroy the ozone layer, which is one factor in climate change. It was an unpleasant payoff, because safer, more efficient cooling provided many health and medical benefits. There’s unfortunately no denying that Midgley’s two greatest successes also became two of humanity’s greatest environmental threats.
Tragic Irony: The Inventor’s Final Years
Midgley worked through the 1930s with a full range of activities, but he contracted poliomyelitis – what we call “polio” for short – in 1940. As polio does, it left him severely disabled, with weakened legs and limited mobility. Within three years, he required significant assistance for most tasks. True to his nature, he developed a system of ropes and pulleys, which allowed him to move himself in bed. With this system, he was able to lift parts of his body, reposition himself, adjust his posture, and relieve pressure on parts of his body.
Unfortunately, like his other two biggest inventions, this one also had an ill-fated outcome. Details aren’t clear on exactly what happened, but he somehow became entangled in the ropes and died of strangulation in 1944. Still, the innovation provided a better quality of life than he might have experienced without it. The irony is that the man who engineered world-changing systems was undone by one of his own designs.
The Inventor’s Legacy and Lessons
We can’t always see the future impact of today’s actions, so we must be careful not to judge Midgley too harshly. Innovation will always harbor a shadow side with unintended consequences, and an inventor would be hard-pressed to predict them. Today we have AI, plastics, and genetic modification – but are we any better at predicting long-range consequences now?
Midgley’s intent was always to improve lives, and as an inventor, he certainly did that. The lamentable outcome was due to the limits of knowledge at the time. Even today, though, we don’t know what we don’t know. We can only act on what knowledge is available to us at any given time.
Your Turn
Consider today’s innovations – which of them might future generations view the same way that we see leaded gasoline or CFCs today?
While some may say that good intentions are no defense against bad outcomes, we may end up forfeiting all innovation out of fear. Would that be a good tradeoff? I don’t see how.
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