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Thomas Midgley Jr. invented leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons
- runarb 4y agohttps://archive.is/X6yM6 https://archive.is/X6yM6
- Symmetry 4y agoThe Memory Palace episode on him was really good: https://thememorypalace.us/butterflies/ https://thememorypalace.us/butterflies/ But, as a joke, on potential EA cause area would be banning everything Thomas Midgely invented, just to be sure.
- TRiG_Ireland 4y agoOr, if you prefer the comedy panel show format, Citation Needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4og8wG8VQWM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4og8wG8VQWM
- Groxx 4y ago>Midgley is best known for the terrible consequences of that chemistry, thanks to the stretch of his career from 1922 to 1928, during which he managed to invent leaded gasoline and also develop the first commercial use of the chlorofluorocarbons that would create a hole in the ozone layer. TIL that was the same person. What a legacy. Whole-world-altering inventions (both in being spread literally everywhere because they were so effective, and in the negative ways) that close together is amazing.
- downvotetruth 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35171357
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- DamnInteresting 4y agoI wrote about this fellow back in 2007[1]. In 1935 he was asked to make predictions about what chemistry/science will accomplish by 2035. Some are pretty wild, but others are spot-on, such as: • Interplanetary travel, involving the production of a substance that will produce more energy per pound than is required to lift that pound out of the Earth’s gravitational field. • The end of visiting; people will stay at home and call on their friends by television. [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/
- whatshisface 4y agoThat substance: ordinary methane.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago> Interplanetary travel, involving the production of a substance that will produce more energy per pound than is required to lift that pound out of the Earth’s gravitational field. Arthur C. Clarke had some words to say about this persistent idea in The Promise Of Space. You don't actually want to lift your pound of fuel <out of earth's gravitational field>, that would be useless. You actually want to burn it as early as possible to lift a pound of something else (preferably cargo). Every second you burn it sooner, the less high you need to lift it. Ideally you'd burn all your fuel on the ground in second 0. Sadly, releasing that much energy all at once tends to lead to Rapid Undesired Disassembly. Hence space rockets burn for a little longer (but still as quickly as possible).
- chuankl 4y agoThe absolute terrible thing about leaded gasoline is that they were already aware of several other additives (including ethanol, IIRC) that have the desired anti-knocking properties. But they went with tetraethyl lead anyway because it is cheaper and provided a few cents more profit per gallon. A cent was worth more back then than it does now, but still :-(
- boomboomsubban 4y agoThey also were aware very early on of the health risks lead caused. Midgley himself suffered from lead poisoning. Then they poisoned the world for those few cents per gallon.
- di4na 4y agoNote that despite suffering from it he kept doing stunt in public without realising it was a danger. Local rationality is a thing. It is not all a plot to suck money out. He believed his own shit.
- actionfromafar 4y agoMoney tends to do that to people.
- JohnFen 4y agoThe love of money is the root of all evil.
- somenameforme 4y agoI would also emphasize a more social issue to this. There's also a tendency for society to discount the dangers of something when the impact is sporadically distributed or long-term. Beyond the endless corporate lobbying and sold out scientists/politicians working to convince everybody that leaded fuel was 100% safe, I think there was also probably a mindset of many in society that 'Well, if leaded fuel is so poisonous and I'm breathing it in everyday, then why am I perfectly fine?' And with such "logic" dismiss any concerns about its safety.
- Cub3 4y agoI really liked Malcom Gladwel’s take on Thomas Midgely Jr. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/the-inventor-who-almost-ended-the-world https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/the-invento... > Midgley and his employers didn’t set out to poison the air with leaded gasoline or wreck the ozone layer with CFCs – but while these dire consequences were unintended… could they have been anticipated?
- MontagFTB 4y agoVeritasium has a great video on him, his inventions, and their impact on the world: https://youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&vl=en https://youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&vl=en
- paulpauper 4y agoThe Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History’s Biggest Mistakes Biggest ever? more than nuclear weapons? A bit of a stretch to say ever. I think this is disputable.
- nradov 4y agoNuclear weapons were not a mistake.
- renewiltord 4y agoNeither is leaded gasoline. As the FAA is eager to point out, it's not safe to do anything else. Can you imagine? Most aviation would never have happened if this guy hadn't invented leaded gasoline.
- jabl 4y ago> Most aviation would never have happened if this guy hadn't invented leaded gasoline. Duh, of course it would. Aviation gasoline would have used other methods of increasing octane, and/or then we'd have made do with slightly lower octane avgas. And engines would have been designed accordingly. The only reason why getting rid of leaded avgas has been a 40 year saga is that they have been chasing the dream of a 1:1 replacement that would require no changes to 100% of existing aircraft. Now it seems they finally have such a fuel in G100UL, we'll see if and how quickly usage of it expands to replace leaded avgas.
- Zak 4y agoThere are a substantial number of existing aircraft that are safe to operate on a subset of automotive gasoline (93 octane, ethanol-free). The FAA says to do so legally requires the purchase of a supplemental type certificate for thousands of dollars. There's no inspection or modification of the aircraft. It's just a piece of paper. The FAA could fix the problem for those aircraft with the stroke of a pen.
- Ekaros 4y agoMistake was anti-proliferation. If every country had nukes wold would be much more peaceful place. Would Iraq or Afganistan got involved if they had capability to deliver nuke to fight enemy combatants in NYC or DC?
- inasio 4y agoNot so one-sided, Fritz Haber [0] is another very interesting chemist. Got a Nobel prize for the process to synthesize ammonia (modern fertilizer production), but then also got side tracked with the 1st world war and became the father of chemical warfare [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sofixa 4y agoFor people in to historically themed power metal, the Swedish metal band Sabaton have a song about him - https://youtu.be/DxkeOkaVRLo https://youtu.be/DxkeOkaVRLo and their collab with a historian, Indy Neidell (of The Great War and WW2 fame) to tell the history behind their songs also has a video about him https://youtu.be/UadfxEJKVM8 https://youtu.be/UadfxEJKVM8 .
- yesenadam 4y agoNobel, inventor of dynamite, created the Nobel prizes to whitewash his name. It sure worked. "by his death, his business had established more than 90 armaments factories, despite his apparently pacifist character." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel How ‘merchant of death’ Alfred Nobel became a champion of peace https://www.thelocal.se/20101004/29406/ https://www.thelocal.se/20101004/29406/
- kwere 4y agoOne ancestor of modern good hearted billionaires
- qqtt 4y agoFriendly reminder that leaded gas is still used all over the United States today in airports (avgas). And if you live near an airport you are probably affected by elevated lead levels. https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/study-commissioned-county-santa-clara-finds-increased-lead-levels-children-living-near https://news.sccgov.org/news-release/study-commissioned-coun...
- renewiltord 4y agoThis is what people really mean when they say "regulations are written in blood". If there isn't visible blood, we're usually happy to hurt people. FAA refuses to act here. Regulations are written in blood. And no one is bleeding yet.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoThe people who live near airports are. Guess who usually lives near airports though.
- dmitrygr 4y agoyou picked a very bad news source. this reporting has been debunked. they failed to control for increased lead in environment. neighborhoods NOT under flight paths but in the same area also have higher lead levels. this is sponsored by land developers hoping to close KRHV
- qqtt 4y agoIt's not like it's a controversial topic. It's a well known, well studied, and well documented effect. https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/1/pgac285/6979725 https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/1/pgac285/69797... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653516313285 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456... https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AEAT-05-2020-0108/full/html https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/AEAT-05-... https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/60c74f2e0f50dbe15d397360 https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/60c74f2... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231011007333 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522... Avgas is unnecessarily putting more lead into the air. Any amount of lead in the air is bad.
- CalRobert 4y agoStrange to think almost all people over ~40 or so still suffer consequences from his work.
- pavlov 4y agoSince this is HN, there’s always the contrarian comment that goes “actually these things are awesome and you should be ashamed for not respecting them” — even if the topic is leaded gasoline and CFCs. You can never know if that comment will be at the top, or showdead-only at the very bottom. That’s what makes it so exciting to open the comments.
- awestroke 4y agoIf you had a time machine, would you go back in time to kill Hitler or this guy?
- andruby 4y agoI’d go back and show this guy the consequences and convince him to use other additives.
- awestroke 4y agoHe knew the negative effects. He also knew that other additives worked just as well (eg ethanol). Still he lobbied hard for using his additive
- eternityforest 4y agoSome people think WW2 would have happened anyway. He was horrible... but the fact anyone actually listened to him is what really creeps me out. One evil man I can understand, you ignore him or put him in jail if he does a crime, it doesn't keep people up at night the same way, although it's disgusting. That same tendency just kind of lurking dormant in millions, means even democracy might not stop it.
- mmusson 4y agoI read a short story (don’t remember the author), the gist of which was an a future where time travel is possible and accessible. There was a group tasked with cleaning up time travel mistakes. Their motto was Everyone always tries to kill Hitler. But this leads to a future armageddon so they have to keep undoing it.
- litiholofan 4y ago[flagged]
- defrost 4y agoWrong in so many ways, there was, of course, extensive study and dedicated satellite instrumentation looking into all the issues you raised. eg: > Nobody explained why the hole was in Antarctica despite almost all the CFC being produced and used in the northern hemisphere. There is both an Artic and Antartic ozone hole, as gases eventually circulate globally both poles receive nearly the same volume of (man made) precursor chemicals .. however the Antartic is typically colder in spring and the ozone destroying reaction is tempreture sensitive.
- litiholofan 4y ago[flagged]
- secretsatan 4y ago> This is nothing more than a monopoly which continues to this day with DuPont, Honeywell, and Arkema at the head of it. You're just a brainless sissy. Amazing, you can't even get monopoly right
- litiholofan 4y ago[flagged]
- secretsatan 4y agoFound your source https://lulz.com/the-ozone-scam-and-dupont-1000-318809/ https://lulz.com/the-ozone-scam-and-dupont-1000-318809/
- litiholofan 4y ago[flagged]
- prennert 4y agoThis Cautionary Tales podcast episode talks about him [0]. Both were invented in the service of DuPont. CFC at least helped making refrigeration safer and helped getting it to the masses. Leaded gasoline on the other hand was always known as a bad idea. In both cases though, DuPont fought back hard to prevent bans of these solutions. They rather kill the planet than their profits. Suitably enough he killed himself with another one of his inventions that used pulleys to overcome mobility issues due to his Polio infection and helped him get out of bed. I guess health and safety was really not his thing. [0] https://timharford.com/2022/11/cautionary-tales-the-inventor-who-almost-ended-the-world/ https://timharford.com/2022/11/cautionary-tales-the-inventor...
- swixmix 4y agoPolio was absolutely terrible for those who had it. I wouldn’t blame him for having it. Or for ending it. However, for other reasons, I agree with you. http://acshist.scs.illinois.edu/bulletin_open_access/v31-2/v31-2%20p66-74.pdf http://acshist.scs.illinois.edu/bulletin_open_access/v31-2/v...
- prennert 4y agoI did not mean to blame him for having polio. I just meant to say that his solution to his mobility problems came with significant tech debt that came to hang him later.
- lysozyme 4y agoThere’s a line of thought that connects the use of leaded gasoline with US crime rates. [1] The idea is that exposure to lead causes people to have problems that lead to violent behavior later in life. The evidence presented includes the correlation observed between the removal of lead from gasoline and a sharp fall in crime rates 20 years later. 1. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
- crote 4y agoA similar link has been suggested for abortion. The drop in crime rate starting in 1993 happened pretty much exactly 20 years after Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973. It is called the "Donohue–Levitt hypothesis".
- kevviiinn 4y agoInteresting that there's a particular political party in the US who likes to bang the drum about crime and law and also wants to ban abortion. Gotta have something to get you votes!
- corobo 4y agoThomas Midgley Jr is currently the record holder for most damage done to the planet by one person. I reckon the Bitcoin guy is in second place. Proof of work was a terrible idea.
- atombender 4y agoIf you're interested in this kind of narrative of brilliant scientists accidentally making things worse, I strongly recommend When We Cease to Understand the World [1] by Benjamin Labatut. A brilliant hybrid fiction/non-fiction book that goes into the story of Fritz Haber and other scientists whose inventions had an unexpected and negative impact on history. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/10/when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world-by-benjamin-labatut-review-the-dark-side-of-science https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/10/when-we-cease-...