Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 Discovery of Tetraethyl Lead In the Context of Technological Alternatives
Charles F. Kettering and the
1921 Discovery of Tetraethyl Lead
In the Context of Technological Alternatives
By Bill Kovarik, Ph.D.
Originally presented to the Society of Automotive Engineers Fuels & Lubricants Conference, Baltmore, Md., 1994; revised in 1999.
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the technological and public health context of the 1921 discovery and subsequent development of the anti-knock gasoline additive tetraethyl lead. The discovery has long been seen as a milestone of systematic research and a vital turning point in the development of modern high compression engines. This paper will show that the choice of tetraethyl lead over other viable alternatives took place within the context of a complex controversy.
One important aspect of the controversy was public. After leaded gasoline entered the market in 1923 - 24, a fatal refinery accident drew news media attention to the poisonous nature of the full strength additive and the potential public health risk from fuel containing the dilute additive. Public health scientists insisted that alternatives existed, but industry in general and GM in particular vehemently insisted that tetraethyl lead was the only additive that could be used.
The controvery was never resolved because until 1991 virtually no primary documentary material was available in public archives. That year, General Motors Corp. released about 80 linear feet (40 file cabinet drawers) of materials from the office of Kettering's research assistant Thomas Midgley. The files date between 1917 and the late 1920s. They are "unclassified," meaning that they have not been fully catalogued, and were released to what was then the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) in Flynt, Mich. They contain research reports, correspondence and internal memos from the Dayton, Ohio research labs headed by Charles F. Kettering which became the main research arm of the General Motors Corp. in 1919.
The documents reveal a second aspect of the controversy involving the auto industry's long term fuel strategy. At the time, around 1921, Kettering wanted to protect GM against oil shortages (then expected by the 1940s or 1950s). His strategy was to raise engine compression ratios with TEL specifically to facilitate a transition to well known alternative fuels (particularly ethyl alcohol from cellulose). However, Kettering lost an internal power struggle with GM and Standard Oil Co. directors of the Ethyl Corp. Kettering's strategy was discarded when oil supplies proved to be plentiful and TEL turned out to be profitable in the mid-1920s. But Kettering and others in GM clearly did not believe that TEL was the only fuel option.