Teflon's 70th

April 7, 2008

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Profile America — Monday, April 7th. For most of history, a good meal was followed by the drudgery of scrubbing the pans used to prepare it. But something was invented 70 years ago this week that changed all that — tetrafluorethylene — far better known as Teflon. Developed by Roy Plunkett of the DuPont Company, slippery Teflon revolutionized cooking utensils. By the time he died in the early 1990s, 3-out-of-4 frying pans in the nation were coated with his invention. Today, Teflon is used in everything from semiconductors to communications cables and even clothing. The nation’s chemical industry generates more than $460 billion a year in sales and provides jobs for over 850,000 workers. You can find these and more facts about America business from the U.S. Census Bureau, now conducting the 2007 Economic Census.

Sources: Chase's Calendar of Events 2008, p. 208
2002 Economic Census, NAICS 325
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/data/industry/E325.HTM