biography
| name: |
Midgley, Thomas, Jr
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1889–1944)
|
| biography:
| Engineer and inventor, born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, USA. He studied engineering at Cornell University. During World War 1, on the staff of Dayton (OH) Engineering Laboratories (1916–23), he worked on the problem of ‘knocking’ in petrol engines, and by 1921 found tetraethyl lead to be effective as an additive to petrol, used with 1,2-dibromoethane to reduce lead oxide deposits in the engine. As president of Ethyl Corporation from 1923, he introduced Freon-12 as a non-toxic non-inflammable agent for domestic refrigerators. He also devised the octane number method of rating petrol quality. |
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