It was General Motors engineer Thomas Midgley Jr. who invented leaded gasoline. But when the invention was to be presented to the public, he himself was lying at home with lead poisoning.
Ironically, the inventor of leaded gasoline, Thomas Midgley Jr., himself suffered from lead poisoning. Lead was known to be toxic as early as the 1920s. Yet despite this, gasoline companies chose to add lead to fuel to improve performance.
Midgley, an engineer at General Motors, proposed tetraethyl lead as an additive to prevent knocking in engines. Ethanol was also considered. But lead was chosen, and in 1923 the first leaded gasoline was sold.
The Ethyl company that sold the gasoline failed to mention "lead" in its marketing materials. A Standard Oil spokesman even called leaded gasoline a "gift from God."
Midgley was not present at the fuel's public premiere. He had fallen ill from lead poisoning, which he contracted during a demonstration where he washed his hands in leaded gasoline and inhaled the vapors.
"I don't understand whether he was deceiving himself, lying, or simply unaware of what future generations would face," David Rosner, a historian at Columbia University, told History .
In 1924, several workers at an oil refinery in New Jersey died from lead poisoning, and 35 others were poisoned, suffering symptoms such as memory loss and hallucinations.
However, a 1926 study concluded that leaded gasoline could continue to be sold, as the health risk was considered "minimal". It was not until the 1970s that lead levels were lowered, and in the 1980s and 1990s it was phased out in many countries.
Leaded gasoline is today considered one of the world's most dangerous innovations, having caused widespread damage to public health.
Midgley, who also invented freon, which was used as a refrigerant in car air conditioning systems for many years, did not leave a particularly positive legacy in the eyes of many.
"He had a greater negative impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in the history of the Earth," says environmental historian JR McNeill.
Midgley, who later contracted polio, invented a device to help himself, but ended up choking to death on it.
