Part4 Secret of PTFE Teflon
While Du Pont hesitated, an enterprising French couple took matters into their own hands. Marc Grégoire, an engineer, had heard about Teflon from a colleague who had devised a way to affix a thin layer of it to aluminum for industrial applications. The process involved etching the aluminum with acid to create a microscopically pitted surface, covering the surface with Teflon powder, and heating it to just below its melting point, which caused it to interlock with the aluminum surface.
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| In France, the birthplace of nonstick cookware an advertisement proclaims: "Tefal never sticks." |
Grégoire, an avid fisherman, decided to coat his fishing gear with Teflon to prevent tangles. His wife, Colette, had another idea: Why not coat her cooking pans? Grégoire agreed to try it, and he was successful enough to be granted a patent in 1954. The Grégoires were so happy with the results that they set up a business in their home. Starting around 1955, Marc coated pans in their kitchen and Colette peddled them on the street. French cooks, despite their customary reverence for tradition, snapped them up. Encouraged by this reception, the Grégoires formed the Tefal Corporation in May 1956 and opened a factory.
Soon afterward France’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Hygiene Publique officially cleared Teflon for use on frying pans. The Laboratoire Municipale de Paris and the École Supérieur de Physique et Chimie also declared that Teflon-coated cookware presented no health hazard. In 1958 the French ministry of agriculture approved the use of Teflon in food processing. That same year the Grégoires sold one million items from their factory. Two years later sales approached the three million mark.
Du Pont executives, who were aware of these developments in France, decided to seek the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for wider use of Teflon in cooking and food processing. The company tested frying pans and other cooking surfaces under conditions even more rigorous than those used in France. Du Pont’s researchers concluded that utensils coated with Teflon were “unquestionably safe” for both domestic and commercial cooking. In January 1960 the company gave the FDA four volumes of data, collected over nine years, on the effects of Teflon resins in food handling. Within a few months the FDA decided that the resins did not “present any problems under the Food Additives Amendment.” Despite the favorable FDA decision, Du Pont continued to move slowly, since marketing Teflon-coated cookware was not a high priority. Then one man’s enthusiasm nudged Du Pont into action.
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| Workers in a Tefal factory |
Thomas G. Hardie was an American who admired French culture. After graduating from college, he served in the military, worked for the Marshall Plan in Paris, and became a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper chain. Then he entered his family’s business, Nobelt, a Maryland firm that makes textile machinery. During a business trip to France in 1957 or 1958, Hardie met Marc Grégoire at a party on the Left Bank. The Frenchman enthusiastically told Hardie about his business and the factory he was building in a Paris suburb. Hardie was intrigued by Grégoire’s tale of the fast-selling cookware.
After Hardie went home to Maryland, he decided that the popular French pans would sell in the United States too. He went back to Paris to meet with Grégoire, who was reluctant to do business with an American because he didn’t trust Yankees. But Hardie was very persuasive and eventually won Grégoire’s confidence. With visions of quick success, he returned to the States with the rights to manufacture nonstick cookware using Tefal’s process.
During the next two years Hardie called on many American cookware manufacturers, trying to persuade them to make Teflon-coated pans. He had no success because the idea of nonstick pans was simply too new. All these rejections turned Hardie’s business venture into a personal crusade. Although he had no experience in the import business, he cabled the French factory to ship him 3,000 Tefal pans, which he warehoused in a barn on his sheep farm in Maryland. He sent free sample pans, along with promotional literature, to housewares buyers at 200 department stores. Not one of them placed an order.
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