Charles Boss Kettering
speaker
24 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 22 May
Charles Boss Kettering’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford · The Inventor who Almost Ended the World (Classic) · 22 May 2026
podcast
Thomas Midgley, Jr.
was born on College Hill in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, May 18, 1889.
His father, Thomas Midgley, Sr., was a prolific inventor in a variety of fields, but notably that of automobile tires.
And his mother, Hattie.
In 1916, Midgley became a member of our research staff and began then his long association with me and his remarkably productive career in research.
What do you want me to do next, boss?
That simple question and the answer to it turned out to be the beginning of a great adventure in the life of a most versatile man.
Midgley contributed so greatly to more pleasant and efficient living.
He has made science a liberator, and we rejoice with him in the satisfactions that must be his in seeing the fruits of his labour.
Posterity will acknowledge their permanent value.
He and his helpers prepared such a compound, dichloridifluoromethane.
It proved to have just the properties required.
It is highly stable, non-inflammable, and altogether without harmful effects on man or animals.
Thanks for getting in touch.
It is appalling.
In the early fall of 1940, Midgley was struck by an acute attack of poliomyelitis, which deprived him of the use of his legs and made him a semi-invalid.
Midgley died unexpectedly on November 2nd, 1944, at the age of 55.
We thought that maybe if the fuel were coloured red, it would absorb more radiant heat and evaporate more completely, thus preventing the rough combustion.
Many anti-knock agents were discovered along the way.
Compounds of iodine, of nitrogen, of phosphorus, of arsenic, of antimony, of selenium, of tellurium.
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