When Failure Doesn't Stick
Have you ever thought about how many of today’s successes began as failures? I am not talking about successes like the light bulb, where Thomas Edison tried thousands of filament materials before finding Tungsten. I am talking about “successful failures” where the inventor failed at solving one problem but built on that failure to solve another problem.
A classic example is penicillin, where Sir Alexander Fleming’s poor housekeeping led to the growth of a new fungus that killed some of his samples of Staphylococcus, a bacterium he was researching. He tested the antibacterial fungus on other pathogens and found it affected the ones that caused pneumonia, scarlet fever and meningitis, but it did not work on the pathogen for typhoid fever, which was what he was actually trying to cure. Where would we be today if Dr. Fleming had only tried it on typhoid and not been diligent enough to experiment on other bacteria?
As tribologists and lubrication engineers, we have Dr. Roy J. Plunkett to serve as an example. Plunkett was hired by Kinetic Chemicals (a joint venture between DuPont and General Motors) to research a safer chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) for refrigerant. His failure produced one of the greatest scientific successes in the last 100 years.
Plunkett ad made 100 pounds of tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) gas for later chlorination and stored it in a small steel cylinder placed in the freezer overnight. When he and his assistant opened it the next morning, instead of finding gas they found a white, waxy powder. Being a scientist, Plunkett decided to characterize its properties even though it was decidedly not a refrigerant.
What he found was a product that was heat-resistant, chemically inert, electrically resistant and of such a low coefficient of friction that nothing else would stick to it. Later research showed that it stretches significantly and withstands most weathering effects.
What Plunkett’s group knew of polymerization at that time could not have predicted what had happened: the cylinder had acted as a catalyst and the TFE had polymerized. He filed a patent application, which outlined recipes for producing various yields of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), with the suggested application of coating goggle lenses for people who handle corrosive substances such as hydrofluoric acid. He also suggested it could be extruded into fiber and used to make fire-resistant clothing.
Plunkett was transferred to the Tetra-ethyl lead division where he worked on octane boosters for gasoline while this new polymer was sent over to DuPont’s Central Research Department for further investigation.
DuPont found its first use of this expensive product, which it named Teflon, with the Manhattan Project. It was used in the gaseous diffusion process where resistance to fluorine and fluorine compounds was required.
In 1951 Plunkett was awarded the John Scott Medal from the City of Philadelphia.
That same year the world was introduced to one of Teflon’s most recognized uses. Everyone in attendance, including Plunkett, was sent home with a Teflon-coated muffin pan!
One of Plunkett’s suggested applications became reality in a big way 25 years later. Robert Gore, who had worked with his father to discover a way to insulate cables and wires with PTFE, stretched heated rods of PTFE into a fiber that was woven into the fabric that bears his name—Gore-Tex. While it may be known for its water repellency more than any fire-resistance, Gore-Tex is not only heat-resistant, it actually performs better if you follow their slogan/care instruction: “Wash it lots, dry it hot.” So the next time you are working on a task and you think you’ve failed, ask yourself not where you went wrong but where you can go right. That new perspective may lead you to a positive path.
Originally appeared in Tribology and Lubrication Technology Vol. 66, Number 1, Page 6.
