skews13
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Leaded gasoline was the brainchild of an ambitious young chemical engineer for General Motors named Thomas Midgeley Jr. As it turned out, tetraethyl lead is not the only environmentally disastrous compound he discovered; Midgeley also invented the first CFC or chlorofluorocarbon known as freon and used for refrigeration and air conditioning and later in everything from hair spray to styrofoam.
Tetraethyl lead prevented “knocking” in internal combustion engine, a common problem resulting from pre-ignition in the cylinders of higher compression engines developed during the late 1920s. While the simple addition of ethanol, which was quite cheap and plentiful would solve this issue with some minimal loss of horsepower,
Midgeley’s bosses at GM, Arthur Sloan and Charles Kettering preferred having a proprietary product that could be controlled and marketed for more profit. (Both men endowed the esteemed Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in a seeming act of penance and legacy-washing that the Sacklers could only dream of) So GM, DuPont and Standard Oil joined forces to create a company called the “Ethyl Gasoline Corporation” which held the patent on the fuel additive and whose business plan was to introduce tetraethyl lead wherever gasoline was sold.
Tetraethyl lead prevented “knocking” in internal combustion engine, a common problem resulting from pre-ignition in the cylinders of higher compression engines developed during the late 1920s. While the simple addition of ethanol, which was quite cheap and plentiful would solve this issue with some minimal loss of horsepower,
Midgeley’s bosses at GM, Arthur Sloan and Charles Kettering preferred having a proprietary product that could be controlled and marketed for more profit. (Both men endowed the esteemed Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in a seeming act of penance and legacy-washing that the Sacklers could only dream of) So GM, DuPont and Standard Oil joined forces to create a company called the “Ethyl Gasoline Corporation” which held the patent on the fuel additive and whose business plan was to introduce tetraethyl lead wherever gasoline was sold.
The Sorry Legacy of Leaded Gasoline in America
It starts with an anecdote. I usually fly out of Salt Lake City, so that means Delta Airlines but recently I took a series of cross-country flights on Southwest. It was cheaper, and there were reasons. Don’t get me wrong, the flights were on on time,...
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