Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Teflon was a serendipitous invention by Roy Plunket while trying to develop a new refrigerant for DuPont.
And the name makes more sense than some. "Teflon" is sort of distilled out of "tetrafluoroethylene". Actually, it's a polymer (chain) molecule: "Polytetrafluoroethylene" or "PTFE" for short.