The Inventions of Thomas Midgley

Here are a couple of interesting extra details from this story that I couldn’t quite fit into the video.

The “house of butterflies”

In the video I mention that the people working in the production of tetraethyl lead were some of the first people to suffer the effects of lead poisoning. An investigative report quoted by the New York Times gave this disturbing account of what that actually entailed:

"Eight workers in the DuPont tetraethyl gas plant at Deep Water, near Penns Grove, New Jersey, have died in delirium from tetraethyl lead poisoning in 18 months, and 300 others have been stricken... One of the early symptoms is a hallucination of winged insects. The victim pauses, perhaps while at work or in a rational conversation, gazes intently at space and snatches at something not there…”

These hallucinations would get more and more severe over time, until the worker experiencing them had to be strapped down, sedated, or sent to hospital to keep them from reacting to the hallucinatory swarm that surrounded them. The problem was so prevalent that, after a time, the factory came to be known as “the house of butterflies”.

Thomas Midgley’s inventions

Midgley’s two biggest inventions were among the worst things to ever happen to the world… but despite this he was quite a brilliant man. From a young age he showed an aptitude for problem solving and coming up with innovative solutions.

For example, at school he smeared tree bark extract on baseballs to add a little extra spin to them and give himself an advantage when pitching (a technique that has since been banned in the sport, but which, at the time, generally went under the radar).

Later on in life he set up a complicated lawn sprinkler system, with which he could automatically water his lawn just by dialling a couple of numbers on a rotary telephone.

Of course, these fun innovations in no way balance out the harm he did – but they’re a sign that he was generally a smart and capable individual. If his career had taken a different trajectory he could have done a lot of good in the world.