The Boys' Most Bittersweet Death Yet Thomas Midgley Jr. , the American engineer who pioneered the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in refrigeration, died on November 3, 1944.
His story is a cautionary tale of innovation gone wrong, where the benefits of his discoveries were overshadowed by their devastating consequences.
The Discovery That Changed Everything: Midgley's Gasoline Innovations In the early 1920s, gasoline was volatile and prone to detonation.