One of the most versatile and familiar products of American chemical engineering, Teflon, was discovered by accident. There are many such tales to be found in the history of industrial chemistry, from vulcanized rubber to saccharin to Post-Its, all of which were stumbled upon by researchers looking for other things. So common, in fact, are unplanned discoveries of this sort that one might expect would-be inventors to simply mix random chemicals all day long until they come up with something valuable. Yet the circumstances behind the Teflon story show how each step along the way drew on the skills and talents of workers who were trained to nurture such discoveries and take them from the laboratory to the market.

Teflon was developed at Du Pont, the source of many twentieth-century chemical innovations. It came about as a byproduct of the firm’s involvement with refrigerants. In the early 1930s a pair of General Motors chemists, A. L. Henne and Thomas Midgley, brought samples of two compounds to the Jackson Laboratory at Du Font’s Chambers Works in Deep water, New Jersey. The compounds, called Freon 11 and Freon 12, were chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—hydrocarbons in which some or all of the hydrogen was replaced with chlorine or fluorine. GM’s research laboratories had developed the family of Fréons for its Frigidaire division, which made refrigeration equipment. They were meant to replace existing refrigerants such as ammonia, sulfur dioxide, and propane, which were less efficient than Fréons and either too poisonous or too explosive for residential use.

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