Thomas Midgley, Jr., (born May 18, 1889, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died November 2, 1944, Worthington, Ohio), American engineer and chemist who found the effectiveness of tetraethyl lead as an antiknock additive for gasoline. He additionally discovered that dichlorodifluoromethane (a kind of fluorocarbon commercialized below the commerce title Freon-12) could possibly be used as a protected refrigerant.
The son of an immigrant inventor from London, Midgley grew up in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Columbus, Ohio. After graduating from Cornell University with a level in mechanical engineering (1911), he labored in Dayton, Ohio, as a draftsman and designer on the National Cash Register Company (the place only some years earlier Charles F. Kettering had developed the primary electrical money register) after which at his father’s car tire manufacturing unit. In 1916 he went to work for Kettering, first within the analysis workers of the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) after which for the Dayton Metals Products Company, and he stayed with the latter firm after it turned a analysis arm of the General Motors Corporation in 1919.
Midgley’s analysis on the issue of engine knock made him a pioneer within the research of inside combustion. Starting his analysis in 1916, he shortly discovered that engine knock within the new high-compression gasoline engines for cars was brought about not by the ignition system however by the gas combination, which didn't burn evenly. Discovering by likelihood {that a} liquid compound referred to as ethyl iodide decreased knock, he devoted himself to discovering an efficient additive that may enhance the combustion of gasoline and could possibly be produced economically utilizing the know-how of the time. His efforts have been interrupted by analysis for the U.S. struggle effort throughout World War I, when he labored on creating management programs for a propeller-driven “aerial torpedo” and on producing high-performance airplane gas. At struggle’s finish he resumed his seek for a gasoline additive, systematically working his means by promising component teams within the periodic desk, and in 1921 he and his crew discovered that minute quantities of tetraethyl lead utterly eradicated engine knock. Finding that the lead fashioned deposits within the engine, Midgley settled on utilizing ethylene bromide as a compound that may trigger the result in be utterly expelled within the engine’s exhaust. This led to the issue of discovering a cheap supply of bromine, and right here Midgley is credited with creating a technique for extracting the component from seawater.
The poisonous results of lead have been well-known on the time, and at one level Midgley needed to withdraw from his analysis for a short while to get well from lead poisoning. Still, he by no means wavered in his conviction that tetraethyl lead could possibly be produced safely and that the small quantities of lead particulates expelled in engine exhaust wouldn't pose a menace to public well being. As vp of the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation from 1923, he promoted the brand new leaded gasoline to a skeptical public and regulators. From 1933 he was additionally vp of the Ethyl-Dow Chemical Company, which produced bromine from seawater.
In 1930 Midgley was directed to seek out an odour-free, unhazardous, and nonflammable refrigerant fuel that could possibly be utilized in residential fridges and air conditioners. Within three days he settled on dichlorodifluoromethane, which was quickly commercially produced as Freon-12 by Kinetic Chemicals, Inc., for which Midgley served as director. From 1940 to 1944 he was a director and vp of the Ohio State University Research Foundation. For his chemical discoveries he acquired many honours, together with 4 medals from the American Chemical Society and election to the National Academy of Sciences.
During World War II Midgley served as head of 1 department of the National Defense Research Committee; he additionally performed in depth analysis on the composition of pure and artificial rubbers. In 1940 he was struck by polio. Though he misplaced using his legs, he continued to work. He died by strangulation in a hoist mechanism that he had invented to assist him out and in of his mattress.