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Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Thomas Midgley, Jr.
Born 18 May 1889
Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, USA
Died 2 November 1944
Residence USA
Nationality American
Fields mechanical engineer / chemist
Alma mater Cornell University
Known for Leaded petrol and CFCs
Notable awards Nichols Medal (1922)
Perkin Medal (1937)
Priestley Medal (1941)
William Gibbs Medal (1942)

Thomas Midgley, Jr. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ( often colloquially referred to as PA (its abbreviation by natives and Northeasterners is a state located in the Northeastern The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Mechanical Engineering is an Engineering discipline that involves the application of principles of physics for analysis Design, Manufacturing A chemist is a Scientist trained in the Science of Chemistry. Alma mater is Latin for "nourishing mother" It was used in Ancient Rome as a title for the mother Goddess, and in Medieval The Perkin Medal is an award given annually by the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry to a scientist residing in America for an "innovation The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society (ACS and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of Chemistry. (May 18, 1889 – November 2, 1944), was an American mechanical engineer turned chemist. Events 1152 - Henry II of England marries Eleanor of Aquitaine. Year 1889 ( MDCCCLXXXIX) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common Events 1570 - A Tidal wave in the North Sea devastates the coast from Holland to Jutland, killing more than 1000 Year 1944 ( MCMXLIV) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Mechanical Engineering is an Engineering discipline that involves the application of principles of physics for analysis Design, Manufacturing A chemist is a Scientist trained in the Science of Chemistry. He developed both the tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) additive to gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and held over a hundred patents. Tetra-ethyl lead, abbreviated TEL, is an organometallic compound with the formula ( CH3CH2)4 Pb. The haloalkanes (also known as halogenoalkanes or alkyl halides) are a group of Chemical compounds consisting of Alkanes such as Methane While lauded at the time for his discoveries, today his legacy is seen as far more mixed considering the serious negative environmental impacts of these innovations. One historian remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history. " [1]

Contents

Early life

Midgley was born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to a father who was also an inventor. An inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method form device or other useful means He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Cornell University in 1911 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Columbus is the Capital and the largest city of the US state of Ohio. [2]

Discovery of Ethyl

While working for Dayton Research Laboratories-he began working there in 1916- (a subsidiary of General Motors) in December of 1921, Midgley discovered that the addition of tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) to gasoline prevented internal combustion engines from "knocking". General Motors Corporation ( GM) ( is a multinational automobile manufacturer founded in 1908 and headquartered in the United States. The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the Combustion of Fuel and an Oxidizer (typically air occurs in a confined space called a Knocking (also called knock, detonation or spark knock, pinking in UK English or pinging in US English in spark-ignition The company dubbed the substance "Ethyl", avoiding all mention of lead in reports and advertising. Oil companies and auto makers, especially GM which owned the patent, strenuously promoted leaded fuel as an alternative to ethanol or ethanol-blended fuels, on which they could make very little profit. [3]

In December 1922, the American Chemical Society awarded Midgley the William H. Nichols Medal, the first of several major awards he won during his career. The American Chemical Society ( ACS) is a Learned society ( Professional association) based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry William Henry Nichols (1852 &ndash 1930 was a famous chemist and businessman who was instrumental in building the chemical supply business in the U [2]

The subsequent addition of lead to gasoline eventually resulted in the release of huge amounts of lead into the atmosphere, causing health problems around the world. Midgley himself had to take a prolonged vacation to cure himself of lead poisoning. Lead poisoning (also known as saturnism, plumbism, or painter's colic) is a medical condition caused by increased levels of the metal Lead in "After about a year's work in organic lead," he wrote in January 1923, "I find that my lungs have been affected and that it is necessary to drop all work and get a large supply of fresh air. " He went to Miami for convalescence. [4]

In April 1923, GM created the General Motors Chemical Company to supervise the production of TEL by the DuPont company, and placed Charles Kettering as president and Midgley as vice president. E I du Pont de Nemours and Company (,) is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a Gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée Charles Franklin Kettering ( August 29, 1876 – November 24 or November 25, 1958) was an American inventor and the holder of However, after two deaths and several cases of lead poisoning at the TEL prototype plant in Dayton, Ohio, the staff at Dayton was said in 1924 to be "depressed to the point of considering giving up the whole tetraethyl lead program. Dayton is a city in southwestern Ohio, United States. It is the County seat and largest city of Montgomery County. "[4] Over the course of the next year, eight more people would die at DuPont's Deepwater, New Jersey plant. Deepwater is a community in Pennsville Township, in Salem County, New Jersey, lying at the east end of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. [4]

Dissatisfied with the speed of DuPont's production using their "bromide process", GM and Standard Oil created the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation in 1924, and built a new TEL plant using a more dangerous high-temperature "ethyl chloride process" at the Bayway Refinery in New Jersey. A bromide Ion is a Bromine atom with charge of −1 Compounds with bromine in formal Oxidation state −1 are called bromides Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing transporting refining and marketing company Ethyl Corporation is a fuel additive company headquartered in Richmond Virginia. Chloroethane or monochloroethane, commonly known by its old name ethyl chloride, is a Chemical compound once widely used in producing Tetra-ethyl lead Bayway Refinery is a refining facility located in Linden, New Jersey and Elizabeth New Jersey, owned by ConocoPhillips. [4] Within the first two months of its operation, the Bayway plant was plagued by more cases of lead poisoning, hallucinations, insanity, and then five deaths in quick succession. On October 30, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the "safety" of contact with the substance. In this demonstration, he poured tetra-ethyl lead over his hands, then placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose and breathed it in for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problems whatsoever. [3][5] However, the plant was decisively shut down by the State of New Jersey a few days later, and Standard was forbidden to manufacture TEL there again without state permission.

Midgley was relieved of his position as vice president of GMCC in April of 1925, reportedly due to his inexperience in organizational matters, but he remained an employee of GM. [3]

Discovery of Freon

In 1930, General Motors charged Midgley with developing a non-toxic and safe refrigerant for household appliances. General Motors Corporation ( GM) ( is a multinational automobile manufacturer founded in 1908 and headquartered in the United States. He discovered dichlorodifluoromethane, a chlorinated fluorocarbon (CFC) which he dubbed Freon. The haloalkanes (also known as halogenoalkanes or alkyl halides) are a group of Chemical compounds consisting of Alkanes such as Methane Freon is DuPont 's trade name for its odorless colorless nonflammable and noncorrosive Chlorofluorocarbon and Hydrochlorofluorocarbon Refrigerants CFCs replaced the various toxic or explosive substances previously used as the working fluid in heat pumps and refrigerators. Toxicity is the degree to which a substance is able to damage an exposed organism An explosive material is a material that either is chemically or otherwise Energetically unstable or produces a sudden expansion of the material usually accompanied A heat pump is a machine or device that moves Heat from one location (the 'source' to another location (the 'sink' or 'heat sink' using work. A refrigerator (often called a " fridge " for short is a cooling appliance comprising a thermally insulated compartment and a Heat pump - CFCs were also used as propellants in aerosol spray cans, metered dose inhalers (asthma inhalers), and more. Aerosol spray is a type of dispensing system which creates an aerosol mist of liquid particles metered-dose inhaler (MDI is a device that helps deliver a specific amount of medication to the Lungs usually by supplying a short burst of aerosolized medicine that is inhaled He was awarded the Perkin Medal in 1937 for this work. The Perkin Medal is an award given annually by the American section of the Society of Chemical Industry to a scientist residing in America for an "innovation

In 1941, the American Chemical Society gave Midgley its highest award, the Priestley Medal, and followed up with the Willard Gibbs Medal in 1942. The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society (ACS and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of Chemistry. The Willard Gibbs Award, which consists of an eighteen-carat gold medal the Willard Gibbs Medal, was founded in 1910 by William A He also held two honorary degrees, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa ( Latin: 'for the sake of the honour' is an Academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding The National Academy of Sciences (NAS is a corporation in the United States whose members serve Pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science In 1944, he was president and chairman of the American Chemical Society. [2]

Aftermath

In 1940, he contracted polio at the age of 51, which left him severely disabled. Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral Infectious disease spread from person to person primarily via This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to lift him from bed. This system was the eventual cause of his death when he was accidentally entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55. [6] [7] Midgley died before the effect of CFCs upon the ozone layer became widely known.

Standards to phase out leaded gasoline were first implemented in the United States in 1973, and in 1996, the Clean Air Act banned the sale of leaded fuel for use in on-road vehicles. A Clean Air Act describes one of a number of pieces of legislation relating to the reduction of Smog and Air pollution in general However, usage will remain legal in the U. S. for aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment, and marine engines. Leaded gasoline is still common in South America, Africa, and some parts of Asia and the Middle East. South America is a Continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a The Middle East is a Subcontinent with no clear boundaries often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East.

The Montreal Protocol forbade major countries to produce CFCs, and their production is set to cease on the rest of the planet by 2010. For other similarly-named agreements see Montreal Convention (disambiguation. For the film see 2010 The Year We Make Contact. For the book see 2010 Odyssey Two. Health services and pharmacological companies have been replacing inhalers which use CFCs with devices that do not. An inhaler or puffer is a medical device used for delivering medication into the body via the lungs Unfortunately, CFC-based heat-pumps are significantly more efficient than any of their environmentally safe alternatives, such as those which use alkanes and haloalkanes (also known as hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs). Alkanes, also known as Paraffins are Chemical compounds that consist only of the elements Carbon (C and Hydrogen (H (i The haloalkanes (also known as halogenoalkanes or alkyl halides) are a group of Chemical compounds consisting of Alkanes such as Methane This provides great incentive for those who refuse to believe the environmental danger of CFCs to resist the banning of the substances. It has also been suggested that there is a serious loophole in the current ban in production, in that affected countries can still import and use CFCs manufactured in other countries outside the legislation.


Bibliography

References

  1. ^ McNeill, J. PMID is an Acronym for PubMed Identifier or more specifically PubMed Unique Identifier which is a unique number assigned to each PubMed A digital object identifier ( DOI) is a permanent identifier given to an Electronic document. R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (2001) New York: Norton, xxvi, 421 pp. (as reviewed in the Journal of Political Ecology)
  2. ^ a b c Inventors Hall of Fame Profile: Thomas Midgely
  3. ^ a b c "The Secret History of Lead" The Nation, March 20, 2000
  4. ^ a b c d Kovarik, Bill. This article is about the US Publication. For other newspapers magazines and alternate uses by the same name see The Nation (disambiguation. "Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 Discovery of Tetraethyl Lead In the Context of Technological Alternatives", presented to the Society of Automotive Engineers Fuels & Lubricants Conference, Baltimore, Maryland. , 1994; revised in 1999.
  5. ^ Markowitz, Gerald and Rosner, David. Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002
  6. ^ Bryson, Bill. William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, (born 8 December 1951 is a best-selling American Author of humorous books on Travel, as well A Short History of Nearly Everything. A Short History of Nearly Everything (ISBN 0-7679-0817-1 is a General science book by Bill Bryson, which explains some areas of science in ordinary (2003) Broadway Books, USA. ISBN 0-385-66004-9
  7. ^ Alan Bellows. "The Ethyl-Poisoned Earth", Damn Interesting, 2007-12-08. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1609 - Biblioteca Ambrosiana opens its reading room the second public library of Europe.  


Persondata
NAME Midgley, Thomas, Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 18 May 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, USA
DATE OF DEATH 2 November 1944
PLACE OF DEATH
A chemist is a Scientist trained in the Science of Chemistry. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania ( often colloquially referred to as PA (its abbreviation by natives and Northeasterners is a state located in the Northeastern The United States of America —commonly referred to as the
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