Emergence of the Dye Industry

Large-scale use of major natural dyestuffs was made possible by widespread cultivation of the pertinent plant species such as the madder and indigo plants for the dyestuffs themselves, and cactus plants as hosts for the scale insect, Dacty-lopius coccus, that fed upon them. As the appetite for these natural products grew, European entrepreneurs attempted to either improve upon the natural material (e.g., Drebbel s scarlet and Turkey red), or to synthesize dyes in the laboratory. 

When William Henry Perkin succeeded in synthesizing the dye he eventually called mauve in 1856, he was not the first to successfully synthesize a dye— he stood in a long line of other successful chemists going back to at least the beginning of the fourteenth century. If we define a synthetic dyestuff as a colorant which does not occur in nature, and has to be deliberately made by a chemical reaction, then we must include among them substances with as yet undetermined chemical formulas. Farrar [70] has enumerated some of the more notable synthetic dyestuffs as given in Table 4.2. 

Dye Formula Date/CI number Discoverer Source/synthesis 

Orchil (archil) Pourpre frangaise Complex mix of phenoxazones 1300 Cl natural red 28 Florentine trading family in the Levant Lichens (Roccella tinctoria and other species) + prolonged exposure to air and ammonia 

Saxe blue Indigo 5,5 disuUbiiic acid (also tri and tetra) 1740 a 73015 Cl add blue 74 Cl food blue 1 Cl pigment blue 63(A1 salt) Counsellor Barth at Grossenhayn, Saxony Indigo + H2SO4 

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Homburg E (1983) The influence of demand on the emergence of the dye industry. The roles of chemists and colourists. J Soc Dyers Colour 99 325-333... 

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