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In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? for CAT 2025 is part of CAT preparation. The Question and answers have been prepared according to the CAT exam syllabus. Information about In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? covers all topics & solutions for CAT 2025 Exam. Find important definitions, questions, meanings, examples, exercises and tests below for In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer?.

Solutions for In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? in English & in Hindi are available as part of our courses for CAT. Download more important topics, notes, lectures and mock test series for CAT Exam by signing up for free.

Here you can find the meaning of In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? defined & explained in the simplest way possible. Besides giving the explanation of In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer?, a detailed solution for In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? has been provided alongside types of In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? theory, EduRev gives you an ample number of questions to practice In the late 1940s, a graduate student at the University of Chicago named Clair Patterson was using a new method of lead isotope measurement to try to get a definitive age for the Earth. Unfortunately all his samples came up contaminated usually wildly so. Most contained something like two hundred times the levels of lead that would normally be expected to occur. Many years would pass before Patterson realized that the reason for this lay with a regrettable inventor named Thomas Midgley, Jr.Midgley was an engineer by training, and the world would no doubt have been a safer place if he had stayed so. Instead, he developed an interest in the industrial applications of chemistry. In 1921, while working for the General Motors Research Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, he investigated a compound called tetraethyl lead (also known, confusingly, as lead tetraethyl), and discovered that it significantly reduced the juddering condition known as engine knock.Even though lead was widely known to be dangerous, by the early years of the twentieth century it could be found in all manner of consumer products.Food came in cans sealed with lead solder. Water was often stored in lead- lined tanks. It was sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide in the form of lead arsenate. It even came as part of the packaging of toothpaste tubes. Hardly a product existed that didnt bring a little lead into consumers lives. However, nothing gave it a greater and more lasting intimacy than its addition to gasoline.Lead is a neurotoxin. Get too much of it and you can irreparably damage the brain and central nervous system. Among the many symptoms associated with overexposure are blindness, insomnia, kidney failure, hearing loss, cancer, palsies and convulsions. In its most acute form it produces abrupt and terrifying hallucinations, disturbing to victims and onlookers alike, which generally then give way to coma and death. You really dont want to get too much lead into your system.On the other hand, lead was easy to extract and work, and almost embarrassingly profitable to produce industrially and tetraethyl lead did indubitably stop engines from knocking. So in 1923 three of Americas largest corporations, General Motors, Du Pont and Standard Oil of New Jersey, formed a joint enterprise called the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation (later shortened to simply Ethyl Corporation) with a view to making as much tetraethyl lead as the world was willing to buy, and that proved to be a very great deal. They called their additive ethyl because it sounded friendlier and less toxic than lead and introduced it for public consumption (in more ways than most people realized) on February 1, 1923.Almost at once production workers began to exhibit the staggered gait and confused faculties that mark the recently poisoned. Also almost at once, theEthyl Corporation embarked on a policy of calm but unyielding denial that would serve it well for decades. As Sharon Bertsch McGrayne notes in her absorbing history of industrial chemistry, Prometheans in the Lab, when employees at one plant developed irreversible delusions, a spokesman blandly informed reporters: These men probably went insane because they worked too hard. Altogether at least fifteen workers died in the early days of production of leaded gasoline, and untold numbers of others became ill, often violently so; the exact numbers are unknown because the company nearly always managed to hush up news of embarrassing leakages, spills and poisonings. At times, however, suppressing the news became impossible, most notably in 1924 when in a matter of days five production workers died and thirty-five more were turned into permanent staggering wrecks at a single ill-ventilated facility.As rumours circulated about the dangers of the new product, ethyls ebullient inventor, Thomas Midgley, decided to hold a demonstration for reporters to allay their concerns. As he chatted away about the companys commitment to safety, he poured tetraethyl lead over his hands, then held a beaker of it to his nose for sixty seconds, claiming all the while that he could repeat the procedure daily without harm. In fact, Midgley knew only too well the perils of lead poisoning: he had himself been made seriously ill from overexposure a few months earlier and now, except when reassuring journalists, never went near the stuff if he could help it.Q. What is the author s opinion of the use of tetraethyl lead in gasoline?a)He/she thinks it is a highly dangerous and unnecessary idea.b)He/she views it as a regrettable but necessary idea.c)He/she thinks it was a good idea, but implemented badly.d)He/she thinks it was originally a useful idea, but it has outlived its usefulness.Correct answer is option 'A'. Can you explain this answer? tests, examples and also practice CAT tests.