GERMAN SCIENCE ui 



the colour industry, also gave an advantage. In other respects, 

 the absence of raw material and of large-scale chemical manu- 

 facture of such things as vitriol and soda, Germany was at 

 a great disadvantage. 



I cannot attempt here to trace the progress of events in any 

 detail. Suffice it to say that before long the colour industry 

 had taken firm root in Germany and had begun a growth 

 which has been nothing less than stupendous, and has placed 

 the nation far before any other in this branch of the practical 

 arts. 



Altogether more than 2,000 distinct coal-tar colours have 

 been put on the market and the number is constantly being 

 added to. I can attempt no survey of them and I will only 

 allude to one more in detail, namely indigo. 



Most people know, I think, that indigo is a blue colouring 

 matter of great permanence obtained from a plant which has 

 been cultivated to a very great extent in India and used from 

 very early times. The value of the indigo exported from 

 India in a year has amounted to 3,000,000. 



The preparation of this colour artificially from coal-tar 

 naturally soon became a hope and aim of the new industry. 

 The chemical nature of the substance was elucidated after 

 much labour, and in 1884 Liebig's successor in Munich, von 

 Baeyer, prepared it artificially. It soon appeared on the 

 market, but did not achieve commercial success. Undaunted 

 by this the German chemists and technologists continued 

 their efforts, and only after more than fifteen years of pro- 

 digious labour and the expenditure of vast sums of money, 

 roundly stated at a million sterling, was success finally achieved. 

 It was a wonderful display of talent and enterprise; it has 

 involved incidental discoveries and industrial innovations of 

 great consequence, and is probably as fine an example as 

 could be cited of the triumph of scientific skill intensively 

 directed to a manufacturing enterprise. In 1 897, when Germany 



