Distressed aristocrats and the story of one accidental success (6 photos)

Purple is a royal color. Due to its rarity and the difficulty of making the dye, even Emperor Aurelian did not allow his own wife to purchase a purple silk dress. For a remarkable thing one would have to pay its weight in gold.





Until 1856, the purple dye was obtained from the glandular mucus of mollusks called needlewort. Extracting the material was a whole quest in itself. They caught the poor creatures using special gear with meat bait. Then the prey was placed in containers and boiled over low heat to obtain a valuable secretion, which in nature was used by the needles to put the victim to sleep.



Iglyanka

The finished dye turned out yellowish. And the dyed fabric changed shade in the sun. The work was not only dirty, but also incredibly smelly. A terrible stench ate into clothes, skin and hair. The mollusks were almost wiped out quite quickly, since the poor creatures did not have time to reproduce: it took about 20 thousand copies to produce just 30 grams of paint.

Chance as the key to success





William Henry Perkin

And then a small mistake happened. William Henry Perkin (1838-1907) - a young laboratory chemist pored over the task of his mentor in the laboratory. He had to isolate quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree, a substance used to treat malaria.



During his experiments, Perkin accidentally obtained an unusual substance - a violet-brown precipitate. William tried replacing the bark with aniline. As a result, the substance turned out to be bright purple and perfectly colored the fabric.

Moreover, the saturation and brightness of the color remained even after washing and exposure to sunlight. In August 1856, Perkin, who was only 18 years old, applied for a patent on the synthetic dye mauvais.



As a result, the accident not only provided the opportunity for large sections of the population to wear purple clothes, a restriction on which clergy and rulers had long established, but also made the young man a millionaire. And since the price of paint was meager, from now on everyone could afford such things. The royals and their entourage were no longer interested in being like everyone else. And the tradition of wearing purple gradually exhausted itself.



However, Perkin did not become proud. And he continued his work and research, deservedly receiving the title of father of the chemical industry.