P E R K I N MEDAL Awarded to Thomas Midgley, Jr., f o r distinguished work i n applied chemistry, including the development of antiknock motor f uels and saf e refrigerants.
HE Perkin Medal of the TSociety of Chemical Industry for 1937 was presented t o Thomas Midgley, Jr., vice president of Ethyl G a s o l i n e Corporation, on January 8, 1937, at a joint m e e t i n g of the American S e c t i o n of the Society of Chemical Industry and the New York Section of the AMERICANC H E M I C A L SOCIETY a t The Chemists’ Club, New York. Marston T. Bogert of C o l u m b i a U n i v e r s i t y presented the THOMAS MIDGLEY,JR. medal and Robert E. Wilson, vice chairman of the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company, spoke on the accomplishments of the medalist. Mr. Midgley Ohen delivered the medalist’s address entitled “From the Periodic Table t o Production.” The Perkin Medal was founded in 1906 in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the coal tar color industry, the first medal being awarded to Sir William H. Perkin, discoverer of aniline dyes. The medal may be awarded annually by the American Section of the Society of Chemical Industry for the most valuable work in applied chemistry. The award may
be made t o any chemist residing in the United States of America for work which he has done a t any time during his career, whether this work proved successful at the time of execution or publication, or whether i t became valuable in subsequent development of the industry. The medalist is chosen by a committee representing this society, the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY, the American Electrochemical Society, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Soci6t6 de Chimie Industrielle. (For list of achievements of each medalist up to 1934, see IND. ENG.CHEM.,February, 1933, page 229.) The list of medalists from the date of founding t o the present is as follows:
1906 1908 I909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1916 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922
Sir William H. Perkin J. B. F. Herreshoff Arno Behr E. G. Acheson Charles M. Hall Herman Frasch James Gayley John W. Hyatt Edward Weston Leo H. Baekeland Ernst Twitchell Augnste J. Rossi F. G . Cottrell Charles F. Chandler Willis R. Whitney William M. Burton
1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937
Milton C. Whitaker Frederick M. Beoket Hugh K. Moore R. B. Moore John E. Teeple Irving Lsngmuir E. C. Sullivan Herbert H. Dow Arthur D. Little Charles F. Burgess George Oenslager Colin G . Fink George 0. Curme, Jr Warren K. Lewis Thomas .Midgley, Jr
The Medalist AN EFFORT t o qualify as INanexpert on this subject I must staI.t by saying that I first met
ROBERT E. WILSON Pan American Petroleum & Transport Company, New York, N. Y.
t h e me d a1is t forty-three years ago when he was approximately four times as old as I. Fortunately for him, he has not been able to maintain this ratio, but it did leave me under a psychologicalhandicap which it, has never been quite possible to overcome. His family soon moved away from our birthplace, and Tom and I have never since lived in the 9am.e city, but about twenty years ago we apparently simultaneously decided to join the Ancient Order of Convention Hounds and soon developed almost a genius for getting appointed to the same committees or elected to the same boards. As a result there has scarcely been a period of three months during that time when we have not been brought together by some convention or committee of the A. C. S., S. A. E., A. S. T. M., or some other of the pre-New Deal alphabetical agencies, and thus we have had frequent opportunities to exchange views on our current researches and recent scientific developments, and even to enjoy some rather one-sided philosophicaldiscussions. Upon one such occasion I recall that I sat up until 6 A . M. listening to Tom philosophize; on another I roomed with him a t a convention while he was suffering from tellurium poisoning and its peculiar
form of halitosis. I have never b e e n a b l e t o decide which of these occasions was the greater test of friendship. On the other hand, Tom kindly undertook the t a s k of t e a c h i n g me to play golf, an ordeal from which his own game has never fully recovered. Our closest association was when we cooperated in nursing his pet baby “Ethyl” through her first five hectic yearsand did that baby have growing pains! But to get back t o the beginning, just a week ago I attended a new show entitled “Brother Rat,” in which a rather slow-witted V. M. I. cadet by the name of Townsend tried to impress some of the other boys by saying that he came from Beaver Falls, Pa., and when another cadet indi;ated that he had never heard of it, Townsend assured him that a lot of great men have come from there,” but was very much flattened by the cutting retort, “Oh yeah? Name one.” Only the presence of my wife restrained me from coming t o his aid and naming one, for it was indeed in Beaver Falls, Pa., on May 18, 1889, that our Medalist first saw the light of day-though that expression is rather a euphemism when applied to an industrial city located but a short distance north of Pittsburgh. By a coincidence the same doctor, T. P. Simpson, who brought
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Tom into the world presided a t my own later arrival, ,just three blocks away, and Tom and I had the pleasure of taking dinner with him a t the age of eighty when we revisited our birthplace a few years ago. While I hope that this will be taken as evidence that great men do come from Beaver Falls, Pa., it is also apparently true that the greater they are, the sooner they come; so a t about the age of four Thomas and his family moved from Beaver Falls to Trenton, N. J., leaving behind for little Robert only the pall of smoke and Thomas’ little folding bed, which was purchased by my father and used by me and my brother and sisters in turn. Indeed, it was even used by my own children on some of their early visits to the family homestead. I n the light of these facts I trust I will be pardoned if I leave any discussion of Doctor Midgley to Dr. Bogert and simply tell you about my old friend Tom. TOM came naturally by his mechanical bent and his inventive genius, for his father was an inventor in the fields of woven wire, bicycles, and particularly detachable tires, which soon replaced the old clincher type, and was engaged most of his life in development and manufacturing. His mother’s father, James Emerson, invented the inserted-tooth saw. His parents encouraged independence of thought and action, as did Betts Academy which he attended in Stamford, Conn. In view of his background it is not surprising that he decided to take a course in mechanical engineering a t Cornell University. The Chemistry Department a t Cornell must be quite proud of the fact that the most famous chemist to graduate from Cornell actually took the course in mechanical engineering. I am sorry that I cannot reyt that Tom was an all “A” student; in fact it appears from 0th his testimony and that of his professors that the ideal of efficiency which has always been uppermost in his mind demanded that he do the minimum amount of work with which he could get by in most of his courses, SO that he could concentrate on a few things which were really of interest to him. Without waiting for the formalities of graduation, Tom rushed off to a job in the inventions department of the National Cash Register Company, and this urgent haste to get on a pay roll was explained a couple of months later when, with a few dollars in his pocket, he married Miss Carrie Reynolds, a charming young lady from Ohio Wesleyan University a t Delaware, Ohio. After about a year with the National Cash Register Company, Mr. Midgley, Sr., decided that Tom had had enough experience a t a drafting board and had Tom join him in a project for perfecting cord tires and improving tread designs. This eventually led to the formation of the Midgley Tire & Rubber Company, backed by Pittsburgh capital, of which Mr. Midgley was general manager and Tom was first chief engineer and later superintendent. TOM eventually decided that this was not the sort of work he was most interested in, and, having heard much of the fame of Charles F. Kettering while still with the National Cash Register Company, he got a job with the Delco Light Company and thus began in 1916 his long and fruitful association with Dr. Kettering. It so happened that his first task was that of trying to get more power out of the small Delco light units when they were o erated on kerosene. It had been found that, operating on gasogne, the compression on these engines could be raised to a point where they gave fairly good power output and efficiency, but when an attempt was made to use these compressions with kerosene as fuel, severe knocking and even cracked cylinder heads resulted. Tom became much intrigued with this phenomenon and, wanting to study it more closely, rigged up a high-speed indicator using a system of optical levers for magnifying and recording the shape of the pressure wave. This eventually led to the perfection of the Midgley indicator which did so much to throw light on just what took place when engines knocked. Among other things, it indicated that knocking and preignition were two entirely different phenomena. The Midgley indicator showed clearly that the knock was due to a rapid rise in pressure after ignition and near top dead center. In attempting to theorize as to why kerosene knocked and gasoline did not, he first seized upon the most obvious difference between the two products-that of volatility-and thought that possibly the kerosene vaporized rather slowly until after combustion started and then vaporized very suddenly with a resultant too-rapid ex losion. If this explanation were correct, he reasoned that by g e i n g the kerosene it might be possible to make the droplets absorb radiant heat from the incipient flame and hence vaporize sooner. Had Tom been a good physicist he could have doubtless found by calculation that this theory was untenable, but being a mechanical engineer he fortunately decided that it was much easier to try it out than do the calculations. He accordingly went to the stockroom in search of some oil-soluble dye, and as usual the stockroom waB just out of
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the desired product. However, someone suggested that iodine was oil-soluble and would tend to dye the kerosene, so Tom promptly dissolved a substantial quantity of iodine in the kerosene, tested it in a moderately high-compression engine, and found to his delight that the knocking was eliminated. Tom immediate1 sent out to scour Dayton for all available samples of oil-solub& dyes and that afternoon tested out a dozen different ones in rapid succession without getting the slightest result from any of them. To clinch the matter, he added colorless ethyl iodide to the gasoline and found that this stopped the knock. Thus the first theory of detonation went to start the graveyard, which is now fairly well filled, but along with its demise came the real birth of Tom as a chemist, and for the next few years he was an insatiable student of every branch of chemistry to aid him in endeavoring to explain his observations and to make new compounds for trial as antiknock agents. He also discovered that there was a wide difference between gasolines, and that various pure hydrocarbons differed greatly in their knocking characteristics. The Midgley indicator opened a whole new field for the development of both fuels and engines. Space is not available to trace the long course of his development of better and better antiknock agents-iodine, ethyl iodide, aniline, selenium oxychloride, diethyl telluride, and hundreds of others-each a step along the road of progress, but each proving to have some rather serious objection to prevent its widespread commercial use. I might, however, mention one of particular interest, diethyl telluride, which was the best antiknock agent found up to the time of the discovery of tetraethyllead. Its cost and efficiency were such that it could have found a definite place in the com’mercial field had it not been for one serious drawback-the fact that even minute quantities of diethyl telluride, or almost any form of tellurium, when inhaled or even absorbed through the skin gives an individual tellurium poisoning, the outstanding symptom of which is a strong garlic-like odor given off apparently from every pore of the body and affecting everything and everyone with whom the victim comes into close contact. During the period of active experimentation on this compound, first Tom and eventually the entire Midgley family almost became ostracized, except among the chemical fraternity who could understand the difficulty. Tom had to travel considerably during this period and found that the only feasible way was t o travel by day, go into the smoking car, and sit down beside the swarthiest individual in the car in hope that the other passengers would blame this hapless individual for the odor which soon ervaded the car. This country has many reasons to be grateful for the discovery of tetraethyllead and in my opinion not the least of these is the fact that had it not been discovered I feel sure that Tom would have worked out some way to put diethyl telluride on the market. (That might, however, have afforded a prompt and effective solution of our immigration problem.) TO BASE Tom’s fame primarily on the discovery of tetraethyllead is to do him a great injustice. The discovery of this one compound was simply one battle in a long campaign which lasted for many years both before and after its discovery, and in this campaign Tom was the general, active on every front. Many major difficulties were encountered in putting tetraethyllead on the market. In the first lace he was up against the fundamental difficulty that tetraet$llead was not of much advantage except in motors of higher compression than were on the market; on the other hand, motors of higher compression could not be put on the market until a better fuel was available. In the second place the oil industry could foresee an investment of many millions of dollars in storage facilities, distributing facilities, and extra pumps and tanks a t service stations if this new and more expensive fuel were to be put on the market. A t that time I was with the Standard Oil of Indiana and had the pleasure of working with Tom in persuading that organization t o be the first major company to take up the marketing of tetraethyllead under an exclusive five-year contract, which eventually redounded greatly to the benefit of both our companies. Before this was well under way, however, a serious outbreak of poisoning cases resulting from the manufacture of tetraethyllead was seized upon by labor agitators and publicity seekers in an attempt to convince the public that tetraethyllead was a major threat to the public health. Ethyl gasoline was therefore temporarily withdrawn from the market, pending a thorough investigation by a distinguished committee a pointed by the Surgeon General. Its sale was resumed only a f k r the Surgeon General approved its manufacture and general distribution under regulations directed particularly toward reducing the hazard in manufacturing tetraethyllead and blending the concentrated product into the gasoline. Another recurrent difficulty was the fact t h a t the lead oxide formed in the combustion of even traces of tetraethyllead in
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Ethyl gasoline tended t o deposit on spark plugs, exhaust valves, etc., and in some cases to flux with the iron oxides, thus accelerating corrosion. This difficulty led to a tremendous amount of study and the gradual evolution of the present composition of Ethyl fluid in which chlorine and bromine compounds are added to convert the products of combustion to a harmless form. As a result, a serious shortage of bromine was soon created, and Tom and his associates accordingly developed two or three alternative methods of recovering bromine from sea water. This operation is now performed on a tremendous scale. The total consumption of bromine in Ethyl fluid is about ten times as great as this country’s consumption of bromine prior to the advent of tetraethyllead-another result of the impact of the Midgley discovery on the chemical world. However, all these problems were solved, largely because of Tom’s hard work and ingenuity, and today about 70 per cent of the gasoline sold in this country contains tetraethyllead. It is estimated that the amount of additional horsepower which the discovery of tetraethyllead made available to American civilization amounted, in last year’s cars alone, to about forty times the horsepower which will be available from Boulder Dam.
standing papers bearing on the general subject of natural and synthetic rubbers. Tom’s other outstanding discovery was, of course, the development of certain organic chlorofluorides as the only refrigerants which are a t once stable, nontoxic, and nonflammable. Again tbis articular discovery is merely a symbol of the many special probyeems for General Motors and its affiliated companies to the solution of which Tom has devoted his talents. By them he has proved that neither the discovery of tetraethyllead nor of Freon were accidents but rather the result of real chemical ingenuity and intuition, plus a lot of hard work and horse sense. Who would have dared to imagine that a stable, nontoxic, nonflammable refrigerant could be made in effect by combining a highly flammable gas, methane, with two of the most toxic gases known, chlorine and fluorine; yet that is the acaom lishment which has done more than any other one thing to m a i e home cooling installations safe and popular. As a natural outgrowth of his inventions, Tom is today active as vice president of the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation and also of Kinetic Chemicals, Inc., and is also on call to all of the General Motors affiliates for attacking special problems.
BEFORE all of this work on Ethyl gasoline was completed, Tom decided that, in view of the prevailing high prices for rubber plus the threat of further restrictions by foreign agreement, American industries dependent on rubber should do more to study the possibilities of synthetic rubber, particularly in connection with the possibility of starting such synthesis from petroleum hydrocarbons, and he secured the support of the General Motors Corporation for such a program. After the failure of the rubber restrictions and the sharp drop in the price of rubber, this project ceased to promise early commercial success, but so many avenues of investigation had been opened bearing on the theory of natural and synthetic rubber and related hydrocarbons that Tom has continued the work since that time with a staff of two or three men which he is personally financing and to which he is devoting a considerable portion of his own time. This work has resulted in the publication of a series of fifteen out-
ONE of the most remarkable things about Tom has been the keen interest and sense of responsibility he has shown in all the activities of the chemical profession, and particularly the time and energy he has given to the business affairs of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY.Having served as fellow director and under his chairmanship during the past five years of heavy stress for professional societies as well as business organizations, I can testify that his work and judgment have been invaluable to that organization. During a period wben so many men who have been trained in chemistry and owe their present positions to that profession have been withdrawing from active service in chemical organizations or even actually resigning their memberships, pleading the stress of business, our medalist, who was not trained as a chemist, has devoted more and more of his time to rofessional activities and has in addition established the d d g l e y Foundation for the promotion of research. More power to such men!
F r o m the Periodic Table to Production
I
N A N E A R L I E R age, when
THOMAS MIDGLEY, JR. tion. H e merely taught me enough science and industry were simt o give me an entrance credit t o Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, Detroit, Mi&. ple, individualistic processes, i t Sibley College, Cornell University, is conceivable t h a t some person, where I studied mechanical engii by his efforts alone, could have advanced applied chemistry neering. B u t while I was under his tutelage, one of those sufficiently t o have won t h e Perkin Medal. Today, this is no peculiar incidents occurred which was destined t o be of longer true, T o advance applied chemistry even a little regreat value t o me later on: When the periodic table was quires the organized effort of many individuals. It is only being described t o us by Robert, he advanced the thought fitting t h a t I acknowledge a t this time the aid which I have t h a t this regular arrangement of the atoms was evidence of received from others i n solving the two problems for which the existence of the Deity. I disagreed and we argued. I I a m being rewarded. contended that i t simply indicated t h a t the atoms were made C. F. Kettering was a primary factor. Without his guiding up of still smaller particles. The argument went on for days genius, faith, patience, and financial support i t is likely t h a t and weeks. A useless argument? Not i n the least; for in neither Ethyl gasoline nor the Freon refrigerants would be in the course of it I had occasion t o learn much about the existence today. The assistance of T. A. Boyd and Carroll periodic table and t o have it impressed upon m y memory A. Hochwdt i n the development work which led t o the as a very useful tool in research work. discovery of the utility of tetraethyllead in motor fuels cannot be overemphasized. Albert L. Henne deserves fully as much Development of a Knock Inhibitor credit as I for developing t h e organic fluorides as refrigerants. For example, i n the search for a material with which t o There is still one more person, who, while not actually control knocking in a n internal combustion engine, the associated with the work, played a n important part in the following determinations were arrived at by the Edisonien solution of both problems. H. M. Robert is at present method : professor of economics at the U. S. Naval Academy, b u t some thirty years ago he taught chemistry a t Betts Academy which 1. Elemental iodine, dissolved in motor fuel ih very small I attended. T o say t h a t Professor Robert gave me m y start quantities, greatly enhanced the antiknock characteristics of the i n chemistry, or inspired me therewith, would be a n exaggerafuel (the basic discovery).
