Teflon
Roy Plunkett, DuPont, USA, patent 2,230,654 of 1941. The slippery accident in a gas cylinder.
Overview
Plunkett opened a tetrafluoroethylene cylinder in 1938 to find it empty, the gas having polymerized into white wax. PTFE was inert to nearly everything, so the Manhattan Project seized it for uranium hexafluoride gaskets. Patented in 1941, Teflon later coated pans from 1954's French Tefal. Gore-Tex membranes and wire insulation descend from the same polymer. The lucky-cylinder story is chemistry's most famous accidental fortune.
Related Patents
Vulcanized Rubber
Goodyear spent years obsessed with gum elastic, accidentally finding sulfur-heat curing around 1839 and patenting vulcanization in...
Bessemer Process
Bessemer patented the converter that blasted air through molten pig iron, burning impurities and making steel cheaply at scale. Wi...
Bakelite
Belgian-American chemist Baekeland patented phenol-formaldehyde resin, the first plastic not derived from plants or animals. Bakel...
Nylon
Carothers' polyamide research at DuPont yielded nylon 6,6, patented 1938 after his death by suicide in 1937. Stockings introduced ...