How were Teflon and bubble wrap invented by accident?

Both products came from experiments that did not go as planned. Teflon appeared when a chemist found that a refrigerant gas had turned into a slippery solid inside its cylinder. Bubble wrap came from an attempt to make textured wallpaper, and its creators later found that the trapped-air film worked as packing material. [1] [2]

Roy Plunkett was a DuPont research scientist working at the company's Jackson Laboratory in New Jersey. He was looking for new chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants that would be non-toxic and non-flammable, and he stored tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) gas in small canisters kept cold until it was needed. On April 6, 1938, he and his assistant Jack Rebok opened a canister and no gas came out, even though it weighed as much as before. According to the American Physical Society, Plunkett tipped it over and a whitish powder fell out, and the two then cut the cylinder open and found more powder packed inside. [1]

Plunkett concluded that the gas had polymerized into a waxy solid, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), with the iron surface inside the container acting as a catalyst. The APS notes this was not predicted by prevailing theory at the time. Smithsonian Magazine reports that he tested the material and found it resisted high temperatures and did not react with or dissolve in strong corrosive chemicals. He described his first reaction as thinking they would have to start over. [1] [3]

The material was at first shelved, because it was expensive to make and no profitable use was obvious. Its first application was on the Manhattan Project, where it coated valves and seals exposed to highly reactive uranium hexafluoride at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. DuPont patented the polymer in 1941. Sources give slightly different dates for the brand: the APS says the Teflon trademark was registered in 1945, NorthJersey.com says it was branded in 1944, and Teflon.com says commercial sales under the name began in 1946. According to NorthJersey.com, Teflon became a household name in cookware in the early 1960s. [3] [1] [2] [4]

In 1957, Swiss chemist Marc Chavannes and engineer Alfred Fielding, in New Jersey, set out to make three-dimensional wallpaper. They worked with plastic shower curtains and a heat-sealing machine, and produced a film with air bubbles trapped inside. Because the bubbles could pop and deflate, the result looked like a failure as a wall covering. [2]

The inventors kept looking for a purpose. They hired a consultant to compile a list of 400 possible uses, and an early attempt to sell it as greenhouse insulation failed. In 1960, IBM contracted the company, which became Sealed Air, to supply packing material for its 1400 series computers. The film was later branded Bubble Wrap, and its use as packaging has lasted. [2]

Neither case was pure luck. Teflon.com quotes scientists calling PTFE's invention serendipity, a flash of genius, a lucky accident, or a mixture of all three. In both stories the unexpected result only mattered because someone investigated it or kept searching for a use. The search results here come from secondary sources, so details such as who said what in the lab rest on later retellings and Plunkett's own recollections. [4] [1]