Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye, is…

Mauveine, the first synthetic organic dye, is discovered by William Henry Perkin while he is attempting to synthesize quinine.

This eventually leads to the birth of the chemical industry.

William Perkin was born in the East End of London, the youngest of the seven children of George Perkin, a successful carpenter.

His mother, Sarah, was of Scottish descent but moved to east London as a child.

He was baptized in the parish church of St. Paul's, Shadwell, which had been connected to such luminaries as James Cook, Jane Randolph Jefferson (mother of Thomas Jefferson) and John Wesley.

At the age of fourteen, Perkin had attended the City of London School, where he was taught by Thomas Hall, who had fostered his scientific talent and encouraged him to pursue a career in chemistry.

In 1853, at the precocious age of fifteen, Perkin had entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London (now part of Imperial College London), where he began his studies under August Wilhelm von Hofmann.

At this time, chemistry was still in a quite primitive state: although the atomic theory had been accepted, the major elements had been discovered, and techniques to analyze the proportions of the elements in many compounds were in place, it was still a difficult proposition to determine the arrangement of the elements in compounds.

Hofmann had published a hypothesis on how it might be possible to synthesize quinine, an expensive natural substance much in demand for the treatment of malaria.

Perkin, who had by this time become one of Hofmann's assistants, had embarked on a series of experiments to try to achieve this end.

During the Easter vacation in 1856, while Hofmann was visiting his native Germany, Perkin had performed some further experiments in the crude laboratory in his apartment on the top floor of his home in Cable Street in east London.

It is here that he made his great discovery: that aniline could be partly transformed into a crude mixture which when extracted with alcohol produced a substance with an intense purple color.

Perkin, who had an interest in painting and photography, had immediately become enthusiastic about this result and had carried out further trials with his friend Arthur Church and his brother Thomas.

Since these experiments were not part of the work on quinine which had been assigned to Perkin, the trio had carried them out in a hut in Perkin's garden, so as to keep them secret from Hofmann.

They had satisfied themselves that they might be able to scale up production of the purple substance and commercialize it as a dye, which they called mauveine.

Their initial experiments had indicated that it dyed silk in a way that was stable when washed or exposed to light.

After sending some samples to a dye works in Perth, Scotland, they had received a very promising reply from the general manager of the company, Robert Pullar.

Perkin files for a patent in August 1856, when he is still only eighteen.

At this time, all dyes used for coloring cloth are natural substances, many of which are expensive and labor-intensive to extract.

Furthermore, many lack stability, or fastness.

The color purple, which has been a mark of aristocracy and prestige since ancient times, is especially expensive and difficult to produce—the dye used, known as Tyrian purple, is made from the glandular mucus of certain mollusks.

Its extraction is variable and complicated, and so Perkin and his brother realize that they have discovered a possible substitute whose production could be commercially successful.

Perkin could not have chosen a better time or place for his discovery: England is the cradle of the Industrial Revolution, largely driven by advances in the production of textiles; the science of chemistry has advanced to the point where it could have a major impact on industrial processes; and coal tar, the major source of his raw material, is an abundant byproduct of the process for making coal gas and coke.