Inventors are generally well-intentioned people who come up with inventions and discoveries that make human life easier. Nikola Tesla, Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and many more inventors are names that we engrave in our memories with gratitude.
We would like to commemorate every inventor in a good way, but unfortunately the ambition of human beings to produce and earn money does not make this possible. Today we’re going to cover the dark life of Thomas Midgley, whose only two discoveries have caused irreversible damage to our Earth.
American mechanical engineer and chemist Thomas Midgley was born in 1889 to a family of inventors in Pennsylvania, USA.
Father Midgley, who focused on automobile parts, and grandfather James Emerson, who invented the toothed saw, of course influenced Midgley at a young age.
University education and General Motors years
Being the youngest member of the Midgley family, which is known as a respected family in America, Midgley was curious about machines and chemistry at a young age. had released. After adding his undergraduate education at Cornell University to his successful education life, he started to work at the world giant General Motors (GM) in 1916.
Delco was the place that changed his life
Midgley was experimenting specifically with the lead field, and in order to carry out these trials more comfortably, a GM unit Delco He moved to and conducted experiments in the laboratories there.
Midgley discovered leaded gasoline as a result of his work at Delco. Extremely profitable and efficient, but also harmful to humans and the environment, leaded gasoline has had a negative impact on workers, including Midgley.
Midgley, knowing the harms of lead, pretended to be harmless
Midgley was so affected by lead that he took a vacation to Miami for a while to save his lungs from lead poisoning, but workers continued to work. Many workers died from lead poisoning during and after Midgley’s Miami vacation.
Lead poisoning had very negative consequences on people. So much so that even in workers who did not die, effects such as vision loss, sleep disturbance, kidney failure and the onset of cancer were observed.
A leaded gasoline ad from the Midgley era:
Willingly wish
- Thomas Midgley smoked lead vapor live on air
. As some statesmen said after the Chernobyl disaster, “There is no problem with the Black Sea tea, look, we are drinking tea on the live broadcast”, he took a bullet in his body and inhaled lead vapor into his lungs.
Even this show, which is very expensive in terms of human health, could not save Midgley and the next day the factories were sealed. After the factories were sealed, Midgley was hospitalized for lead poisoning.
The crazy heart doesn’t get tired…
- Freon gas
Continuing her work after her treatment in the hospital, Midgley continued to work. He also discovered freon gas, one of his 100 or so patents.
Freon gas, which is used in products such as cold storage, air conditioner, refrigerator, deodorant today, was a very harmful gas for our Earth, but its damages could be understood years later. Harmful freon gases were used in many sectors until 1985, and its use was terminated in 1985 when its harms were detected. The freon gases used today are a harmless derivative of the freon gas Midgley discovered.
The end of the road for Midgley was a bitter death
A “one-man environmental disaster” by science magazine New Scientist and leaded gasoline in 2010 by TIME magazine. Midgley, who was twice on the list of the “50 most harmful inventions in history” with both freon gas, contracted polio in 1940 and was confined to bed for 4 years. He died in 1944 as a result of his throat being caught in a roller mechanism he designed to stand up and move.
And what do you guys think of Midgley? Do you think there was another human who did as much damage to our planet as Midgley? You can share your thoughts in the comments.
Sources: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 /
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