THOMAS MIDGLEY, JR. B y C H A R L E S F. K E T T E R I N G
“I
do you want me to do next?” That simple question and the answer were the unintentional beginning of a great adventure in the life of a most versatile scientist. The young man who asked the question was Thomas Midgley, Jr., a graduate of Cornel1 in mechanical engineering, He had become a member of the Delco-Light Engineering Department in 1916, and his first job had been to finish up a built-in hydrometer for indicating the degree of charge in the storage battery of a Delco farm lighting set. The answer to the question and the next job came about this way. Ever since we had put the self-starter on automobiles, engineers had blamed the engine knock on the battery ignition which went with the starter. Some work had been done on this subject but the starter business had grown so rapidly that the instruments and data had been put in a box and stored in a coat closet in my office at the Delco self-starter plant. When Midge asked me the question as to what to do next, we sat down and talked about the knock in engines and why an exact knowledge of the cause was so important. “If you want to try this job,” I suggested, “get the box from my office at the Delco starter plant and put the indicator on a Delco-Light engine and see what you can find out.” In this job Midge showed his most important characteristics as a research engineer-versatility and action. The old Dobbie-McInnes manograph was not good enough to do exactly what was required. It did show, however, that the knock did not come from preignition as was the common belief, but that it was caused by a violent pressure rise ajier ignition from the spark plug. So Midge said, “Let’s make a better indicator.” Never did he say “This doesn’t work,” but always, “How can we overcome the difficulty and move ahead?” The new knowledge gained now brought up the question, “Why does the unusual pressure rise occur after ignition and how can it be stopped?” One Saturday after lunch, we talked over the problem and thought that maybe if the fuel were colored red it would absorb more radiant heat and evaporate faster. This theory came about because we both knew that the leaves of the trailing arbutus are red on the back and that they grow and bloom under the snow. So Midge got from Fred Chase some elemental iodine as a quickly available dye to color the fuel red. Much to our astonishment, it reduced the knock. “Was it the color or a property of iodine?” That was the next question. Red aniline dyes were tried with negative results. But colorless ethyl iodide stopped the knock just as iodine had done. So the antiknock compound was the ’VE finished the hydrometer job, Boss, what
iodine itself and not the color. The unknown field now was getting larger and more exciting. Should we get a chemist to help, or should it be a physicist? Engineer Midgley looking at this new field said, “No one knows anything about this problem. We must outline a whole series of experiments and find out if it is physics or chemistry.” He unknowingly started with this outline to become both a physicist and a chemist, unhampered by the traditions of either. The laboratory then was on the second floor of a tobacco warehouse and not very well equipped, but this made no differeoce to Midge. The first World War was now absorbing our attention, and Midge began to work with the Bureau of Mines to produce a better aviation fuel. The knock was limiting the power of the new Liberty engine. Reports had been current that the Germans were using cyclohexane as a fuel. So now Midgley became a physical chemist and started to hydrogenate benzene, but with all the difficulties that had been predicted. Midge was a tireless worker and long hours were common. So, after overcoming several obstacles, one of which was the destructive effect of sulfur on the catalyst, he solved the problem of hydrogenating benzene. Many barrels of this fuel, a mixture of 70 per cent cyclohexane and 30 per cent benzene, were made, and it was perhaps the first synthetic high-octane fuel produced. Out of this work and the investigation of other compounds which had preceded it came the realization that the molecular structure of a fuel is more important than its physical properties. About this same time, one of our laboratories was given the job of developing the aerial torpedo now called the Buzz Bomb. Midge was assigned the control system. This work proved quite successful. After the war we seriously started again the hunt for antiknock compounds. Although neither the discovery of iodine as an antiknock agent nor the synthesis of an improved fuel from hydrogenating benzene was put to practical use, they did have an important effect. They changed the versatile Midgley’s postwar interest and activity from engineering to chemistry, and he soon became one of the best informed and, as the record shows, one of the most creative chemists. Out of his years of research in chemistry, Midgley made four outstanding contributions. He discovered the chemical antiknock agents, the principal one of which, tetraethyllead, is adding so much to the performance and efficiency of gasoline engines in the air and on the ground. As bromine was a necessary complement to lead for use in gasoline, he conceived the possibility of extracting bromine from sea water, although it is present there in concentration so extremely minute as to be measured in parts per million. He and his associates demonstrated that it is practical to get bromine out of the ocean, from which it now is being extracted in huge amounts. With conspicuous courage and imagination, he utilized fluorine in making an altogether new series of refrigerating gases which are nonflammable and nontoxic so that, now in war time, their biggest use is not for refrigeration at all, but for dispersing insect repellents in the atmosphere of living quarters. He conducted intensive researches on rubber which extended the knowledge of the chemistry of vulcanization and of the composition of natural and synthetic rubbers, so vital today. The versatility of Thomas Midgley, Jr., is further shown by the scope of his many other accomplishments. He investigated engine flames by visual observation through a window, by spectrographic studies, and by measurements of radiation. He developed the Midgley Optical Gas Engine Indicator, and the extensively used bouncing-pin indicator. He had a paramount part in organizing the Centennial Celebration of the American Patent System in 1936, and also the celebration of the
THOMAS MIDGLEY, J R
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United States Patent Law Sesquicentennial in 1940. He was a member of the National Inventors Council, and head of one branch of chemical endeavor for the National Defense Research Committee. He made extensive contributions to the chemical profession and to the American Chemical Society, having served as a director of the Society since 1930, as Chairman of the Board of Directors since 1934, and as president in 1944. He contributed about forty papers to the journals of the Society, and ten or more to the journals of other societies, most of which were descriptive of his several researches. For his many contributions Midge was fortunate and grateful to have received during his lifetime an unusual measure of the recognition and honors from his compeers which his accomplishments so well merited. He was awarded the Nichols Medal for 1922 by the New York Section of the American Chemical Society, the Longstreth Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1925, the Perkin Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry in 1937, the Priestley Medal of the American Chemical Society in 1941, and the Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society in 1942. In 1942 also he was elected an honorary member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received, further, the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the College of Wooster in 1936 and from the Ohio State University in 1944. Midge’s accomplishments in industrial research demonstrate that h b had unusual talents in all three of its important phases: first, in primary investigatiop or invention; second, in development or conversion to the stage of practical usefulness; and, third, in selling or in educating management and the public up to the new thing. The tetraethyllead development in particular was an endeavor which required, and in which he demonstrated to a marked degree, his abilities in all three of these phases. Something of Midge’s ability in salesmanship or showmanship has been seen by those who have heard him, and seen him, present papers at meetings of the Society. At Pittsburgh in 1922, for instance, he demonstrated engine knock and its removal on the stage of Carnegie Music Hall both in a glass tube and in an engine; and at Atlanta in 1930 he demonstrated both the nontoxic and the nonflammable properties of freon in one breath, so to speak, by breathing in some of its vapor and softly exhaling it to extinguish a burning candle. Midgley liked people of every class and profession. Out of his many activities and associations, he made many friends, and he liked nothing better than to be a host to them. To me personally Midge has been, during all these years, like a son or a brother. And he was held in the highest regard by his associates everywhere. When, at his funeral, the minister read the familiar verse, “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,” it struck me that in this case .it would have seemed so appropriate to have added, *‘but we can leave a lot behind for the good of the world.” For what he left behind is the world’s great heritage from Midgley’s creative life.
