Many of the great scientific discoveries happen by chance: think of
Alexander Fleming and his discovery of penicillin. So it was with
William Perkin and the colour mauve. Perkin, in 1856 an 18 year old
student of chemistry, was struggling to make artifical quinine (a
malarial cure) for his mentor August Hofmann. As part of his
method, he applied two processes - distillation and oxydisation -
to aniline, a product of coal tar. The result was the beautiful
purplish substance that became known as mauve. Showing a remarkable
degree of business acumen, Perkin realised it would make an
excellent dye, and set about perfecting a method of manufacture and
finding customers - no mean feat, since the substance was expensive
to produce and most owners of dye works were uninterested. Perkin
persevered, and within a couple of years, every woman in
fashionable society was wearing mauve. At the age of only 20, he
had made his fortune. As Garfield shows, however, the story has
implications far beyond one man's success. Before mauve, dyes were
formed from natural substances; after, they were made in the
laboratory. Huge factories produced all sorts of new and beautiful
colours, making vast sums of money for British industrialists.
Mauveis a story about many things: the development of chemistry;
the weakness in British industry as Germany poured money into dye
research and became the largest dye manufacturer in the world
during the war, people's clothes were drab, not because of
austerity, but because no dyes were available; even a history of
fashion as mauve's popularity waxed and waned. All set in motion by
one man - until now one of the forgotten heroes of Victorian
science. Garfield's fascinating book reminds us exactly how much we
owe to him. (Kirkus UK)
Mauve is the beguiling story of a man who invented a colour, and in
the process transformed the world around him. Before 1856,
artificial colour was derived with difficulty and at enormous
expense from animals, minerals or plants. But in 1856 a chemist
called William Perkin found a way of making colour from coal.
Perkin found mauve by chance, at the age of 18, working on a
treatment for malaria. Instead of artificial quinine he produced a
dark oily sludge that, much to his surprise, turned silk a
beautiful light purple. The colour was unique. It not only stormed
the fashion houses of Paris and London, it earned Perkin a fortune
and generated huge industries in the new science of applied
chemistry. Perkin's astonishing discovery, engagingly told in
Mauve, had fundamental effects on the development of explosives,
perfume, photography and modern medicine - effects that colour
everything we see today.
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