10 Inventors Who Hated Their Own Creations

Well not EVERYTHING – the man held over 100 patents and much like Nobel he never actually said he hated or regretted his creations, but given the gift of hindsight there is no way he could look on his scientific contributions overly favourably.

You see, automobiles back when they were called automobiles used to have a knocking effect that made driving a sort of bucking bronco with the DTs experience. It was working with General Motors in the early 1920s that Midgley discovered adding tetraethyl lead, or TEL, to fuel would stabilise cars and hindering the annoying knocking effect. So cars became smoother and more fuel efficient: unfortunately this did coincide with many GM factory workers dying of lead poisoning, coincidentally.

Not content with just creating leaded fuel, Midgley then went to create Freon, the first of the CFCs; you know, those things that deplete the Ozone layer. And although he never outright claimed to have hated these creations, even going as far as washing TEL on his hands to prove its safety, he must have hated his final creation.

Near the end of his life and suffering from polio, Midgley created a bed with an intricate series of ropes and pulleys to assist with the task of getting to and from his wheelchair and bed. He was strangled to death by his bed in 1944. With what we know now of leaded fuel and CFCs harmful nature to the environment it must be assumed he would hate his legacy, being referred to by Environmental Historian J.R. McNeill as having “more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history.”