Teflon was a failed refrigerant that became the world's slipperiest surface

In 1938, Dr. Roy Plunkett, a chemist at DuPont's Jackson Laboratory, was working on a project to develop a new chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant. He prepared 100 pounds of tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) gas and stored it in small cylinders at dry-ice temperatures. When he opened a cylinder to release the gas, nothing came out — the valve was open, but the cylinder was empty.

Plunkett cut the cylinder open. Inside, he found a white, waxy powder — the TFE gas had polymerized under pressure into a solid white material. The substance was incredibly slippery: nothing would stick to it. It was chemically inert, resistant to heat, and had the lowest coefficient of friction of any known solid. The refrigerant experiment was a total failure. But the byproduct was a material unlike anything known.

DuPont's management was initially unimpressed. The substance had no obvious use — it was a lubricant that couldn't be applied to anything because nothing would stick to it. It took seven years to find a practical application. During World War II, the Manhattan Project needed a material that could withstand the corrosive uranium hexafluoride gas used in the atomic bomb. Teflon was the only material that could handle it.

After the war, DuPont commercialized Teflon as a non-stick coating for cookware. The first Teflon-coated frying pan (Tefal) was introduced in France in 1954. Today, Teflon is used in everything from waterproof clothing to medical implants to aerospace components. A failed refrigerant that produced a useless white powder became one of the most versatile materials ever discovered.