When I met Thomas Engel in Sweden on Nov. 28, 1990, he said, “The paths of life are frequently this strange.” It was after he mentioned that if a shoe factory had been present in his vicinity at the time he invented PEX, we would perhaps be walking around today on shoe soles made of cross-linked polyethylene.
But it was chickens, not shoes, that put PEX on the map. Professor Engel explained: “In our neighborhood, there was a chicken farm. One day I was asked whether I could make pipe of this material, which could be laid in the ground. In this way, the hens would have a larger amount of heat and would lay more eggs.”