The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 1954–1963
Tefal stuck PTFE onto a pan, making the first non-stick cookware.
Marc Gregoire found a way to bond PTFE, a material that sticks to nothing, to aluminum, inventing the non-stick frying pan.
Tefal · Marc Gregoire
the move
In the 1950s Grégoire, a French engineer, set himself the task of making a fishing rod out of fiberglass, and in the process discovered PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene), a material with anti-adhesion properties. He developed a way to apply it to an aluminum disc.
PTFE is famously slippery: nothing sticks to it, including the pan it sits on. Grégoire's advance was an intermediate process that let him fix the coating to the aluminum, so the pan itself was protected while food slid off.
His wife Colette suggested using it on cookware, and a steak cooked on the coated disc came away without sticking and was easy to clean. Grégoire took out a French patent for the process in 1954.
When manufacturers were not interested, he built his own cozware in a workshop at Sarcelles, and the company Tefal (Téflon + Aluminum) was born in 1956. A photo of Jackie Kennedy leaving a shop with a Tefal pan helped make it a global brand.
why it works
- Pre-treating the aluminum lets the slippery PTFE actually anchor to the pan
- A coating that repels food also repels the pan, so the interface is the real invention
- One working pan proved the value quickly, on a steak cooked without sticking
- The company made its own product when manufacturers refused the idea
what transfers
The hard part of a non-stick material is not that it repels food, it is that it refuses the pan too; when an extreme property is the goal, the work is on the transition.
what came after
Tefal's non-stick pan spread across the world, especially after the Jackie Kennedy photo and Candlemas pancake events, and was acquired by Groupe SEB in 1968. Non-stick cookware became a kitchen standard, and Tefal expanded into a full range of appliances.
references
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