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When there was worry about the toxicity of TetraEthylLead in gas, Thomas Midgley stood at a podium, poured it over his hands, and sniffed a glass of it for abou
by mrguyorama 2y ago
When there was worry about the toxicity of TetraEthylLead in gas, Thomas Midgley stood at a podium, poured it over his hands, and sniffed a glass of it for about a minute and told the audience he could do this every day without suffering ill effects. Midgley eventually took a leave of absence from work due to lead poisoning.
The company he worked for chose to create and promote TEL because it was more profitable, as something that could be patented and monopolized, despite Ethanol being a great octane booster and being used with ICEs since their invention. They didn't want to use Ethanol because that would have been a competitive market.
Your boss will happily give himself cancer in the future to save a dime in the now, especially if you get the cancer way way faster than he does. Your boss will do this because his boss will put pressure on him until he does, and because people are stupid and irrational.
- photonthug 2y agoThis is a pretty interesting rabbit hole, and it seems like if his inventions harmed others at least they harmed him as well! > in 1944, he was found strangled to death by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted. It is often reported that he had been accidentally killed by his own invention, but his death was declared by the coroner to be a suicide. If actually suicide, perhaps he felt remorse? Elsewhere in the wiki page: > Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history",[32] and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".[33] Fred Pearce, writing for New Scientist, described Midgley as a "one-man environmental disaster".[34] What a legacy, hope the patents were worth it.