ANILINE DYES — LEIKIND 433 



October, I sought an interview with my old master Hofmann and told him of 

 the discovery of this dye, showing him patterns dyed with it, at the same time 

 saying that as I was going to undertake its manufacture, I was sorry that I 

 should have to leave the Royal College of Chemistry. At this he appeared 

 annoyed, and spoke in a very discouraging manner, making me feel that perhaps 

 I might be taking a false step which might ruin my future prospects. 



But this youngster of 18 was not deterred. Although he antago- 

 nized his professor by deserting pure science for a commercial gamble, 

 he succeeded in persuading his own hard-headed father to invest his 

 life savings in this enterprise. His elder brother, who already had a 

 promising business as a builder, was also induced to join the firm. 

 In 1857 a small factory was started at Harrow and a new industry was 

 about to be born. The beginning was not easy. Besides purely 

 chemical problems which had to be solved, there were chemical engi- 

 neering problems as well. Much of the apparatus needed for large- 

 scale manufacture of dyes did not exist and had to be invented. Yet 

 within 6 months after the factory was opened, Perkin, not yet 20, was 

 selling aniline dyes. Within 2 years aniline purple was being made in 

 France where it gained the name "mauve," and soon the color was so 

 fashionable it was made the subject of music-hall jokes. (Punch 

 reported that a Frenchman who visited London returned and told his 

 friends that even the policemen there were ordering people to "get 

 a mauve on.") When Queen Victoria wore a silk dress dyed with 

 aniline purple, the rage for mauve was really on. In 1859, the 

 French paid tribute to the importance of this discovery by awarding 

 a medal to Perkin. It was the first of many similar honors paid to 

 him. Within a relatively few years he was manufacturing eight coal- 

 tar colors, seven of them by processes originating in his own works. 

 These included mauve, Britannia violet, Perkin's green, and alizarin, 

 all of which were made on a large scale. Alizarin, which Perkin de- 

 veloped independently of Graebe and Liebermann in 1869 (the Ger- 

 mans beat Perkin to the patent office by one day) , was of the greatest 

 economic importance. Natural alizarin, or turkey red, was an ancient 

 dyestuff obtained from the fleshy part of the root of the madder plant 

 (Rubia tinctorum and R. perigrina). It was known to the ancient 

 Egyptians, and it has been identified as one of the dyes used to color 

 some of the robes worn by King Tut. It was introduced into England 

 in the eighteenth century by way of India, the Levant, and France. 

 The demand for this coloring matter was great and thousands of 

 acres were devoted to raising the plants from which the dye was 

 produced. Madder, incidentally, was one of the earliest dyes used in 

 microscopy, as we shall see shortly. Then in one fell chemical stroke 

 an immense agricultural industry was wiped out. Within a very few 

 years after the synthesis of alizarin, some 400,000 acres in France and 



