Tanya Weaver looks back at standard time zones, Teflon products and the birth of microchips.
Teflon as we know it today was discovered by accident in 1938. Chemist Roy J Plunkett was experimenting with refrigerant tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) in the labs of US chemicals company DuPont.
During these tests he noticed that one cylinder of TFE gas failed to release as expected when its valve was opened. Cutting the cylinder open, he found that the gas inside had solidified into a white, waxy substance.
Intrigued, he did some tests that led him to the conclusion that the gas had polymerised spontaneously, forming polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) resin. This slippery solid had several remarkable properties including being inert to virtually all chemicals and an extremely high melting point.
Having invented a way to reproduce the polymerisation in the lab, he patented the process on 4 February 1941. DuPont later registered the Teflon trademark in 1945. In 1946, the first products using this non-stick...