250 



DISCOVERY 



en. 



mysteries of the architecture of some molecule. He has an 

 idea which he hopes may do this. He is testing its validity. 

 In the light of this idea, labour otherwise unpleasant seems 

 pleasure, days seem minutes. To succeed is his greatest joy. 

 He may not succeed, but, as it is with sport, he does not know 

 final defeat, but modifies his idea and tries again. Prof. A* 

 Senier. 



During his Easter vacation in 1856, a lad only seven- 

 teen years of age set himself the task of trying to prepare 

 quinine artificially. His name was William Henry 

 Perkin ; and the problem which he faced still remains 

 unsolved, but his experiments led to the discovery of 

 the first aniline dye, and from it has arisen a great 

 industry. In the course of his attempts to make 

 quinine, Perkin obtained a black mass, which would 

 have been left by most students as the final result of the 

 inquiry. But Perkin had the true scientific spirit, and 

 proceeded to investigate this uninviting substance. 

 He obtained from it finally the violet dye known as 

 mauvine or aniline purple. Aniline, from which this 

 dye was derived, is one of the substances found in the 

 tar obtained during the manufacture of coal-gas. In 

 the early days of gas-making, coal-tar was regarded as 

 a waste product of no use to anyone, and often a 

 great nuisance to the manufacturer. It is now known 

 to be a rich mine from which many useful substances 

 can be obtained by chemists, in addition to hundreds of 

 dye stuffs. 



After Perkin's discovery of mauve, numerous other 

 dye-stuffs were produced in quick succession from coal- 

 tar by variations of the process discovered by him ; 

 and there are now several hundreds of similar dyes 

 on the market, all of which owe their origin to his work. 

 Here, then, we have a striking example of a vast indus- 

 trial development being founded upon a result obtained 



