German dye manufacturers

Nearly all dye manufacturers use letters and numerals in the names of their products to define the hue. Thus B is blue G, yellow (gelb in German) or green R, red and Y, yellow. Numerals, ie, 2G (or GG), 3G, 4G, etc indicate, in this case, a successively yellower or greener shade. Occasionally, suffixed letters are used to feature other properties such as solubiHty, lightfastness, brightness, and use on synthetic fibers. 

After the second World War, German firms manufacturing indigotin faced serious competition from Knglish and American dyestuff companies. To counteract this, the Germans developed continuous operations for manufacturing the dye. However, because of the complexity of the equipment and the operations (126), the batch process is still the preferred manufacturing method. 

The modern U.S. chemical industry emerged in 1915, when supplies of dyes were cut off by Germany, which required dyes and their intermediates for military purposes, including the manufacture of explosives, and also by the British blockade on German shipping. From the 1970s the by then mature industry declined in Europe and the United States, in part because of environmental difficulties facing dye manufacturers, such as the pollution of surface waters. 

Although the dyeing procedure was accurately described, it was still difficult for the outsider to dye up his own set of these blue standards. Hence, in order to eliminate all sources of error, the standards have been supplied free of charge by the German Echtheitkommission and by German and Swiss dye manufacturers. 

But unfortunately salicylic acid attacks the mucous membranes of the mouth and esophagus and causes gastric pain that may be worse than the discomfort it was meant to cure. Felix Hoffmann, a chemist for Friedrich Bayer, a German dye company, reasoned that the corrosive nature of salicylic acid could be altered by addition of an acetyl group and in 1893 the Bayer Company obtained a patent on acetylsalicylic acid, despite the fact that it had been synthesized some forty years previously by Charles Gerhardt. Bayer coined the name Aspirin for their new product to reflect its acetyl nature and its natural occurrence in the Spiraea plant. Over the years they have allowed the term aspirin to fall into the public domain so it is no longer capitalized. The manufacturers of Coke and Sanka work hard to prevent a similar fate befalling their products. 

The best example is the study of research at Du Pont. See David A. Hounshell and John K. Smith, Jr., Science and Corporate Strategy. Du Pont R D, 1902-1980 (Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge University Press, 1988). For the German case see John Joseph Beer, Coal tar dye manufacture and the origins of the modern industrial research laboratory, Isis, 49 (1958), 123-131 Georg Meyer-Thurow, The... 

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