FATHER OF DYE INDUSTRY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 106, 28 January 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

FATHER OF DYE INDUSTRY

W. H. Perkin Remembered

The rear 1938 was the centenary of Hie birth of W. H. Ferkin, who. at the age of 18, became tlie father <>l Hie artificial dyestuffs industry, and, indirectly, of many other great industries which depend on the organic chemist, said “The Times” recently in a leading article. He was a pupil of the German chemist. A. W. Hofmann, at the Royal College of Chemistry in Londjk when, in 1856, lie was inspired by remark of his master s to essay IJbe artificial production of quinine. ‘ In this he failed : but lie was moved by scientific curiosity to try another similar reaction, and from it he got a black precipitate from which scientific curiosity again prompted him to remove the colour. The discovery that, the coloured solution thus obtained could dye silk a brilliant shade of mauve was a most Important step in advance, but the discovery of a method by which the mauve could be used to dye cotton was more important still. Not less striking was the combination in this youth of chemical skill with a commercial ability winch quickly established production of Hie dye on a manufacturing scale, in spite of all the difliculties’of obtaining the necessary raw materials in adequate quantities and at sufficiently low cost. A few years Inter lie-, rendered another great service to the dye industry by working out a method for the practical production of artificial alizarin, the colouring matter of the madder root, of which the theoretical process had been patented by two German chemists; but in 1873 lie withdrew from chemical, manufacturing, sold bis factory at Greenford Green, and devoted himself th the pure chemical research which was more congenial to his temperament. In a sense alizarin may be said to have been the cause of Perkin’s retirement. He had sown the seed, making a competence in the process: but the harvest was being reaped by Germany, which soon built up what amounted to a monopoly in the manufacture of synthetic dyes and allied products, and retained it till the Great War, as we found to our cost. One of the reasons given for this German success was that the German chemists early made several “lucky strikes,” and that the profits from them provided riioney for research and propaganda. But were not these “strikes” themselves the rewards of scientific research, to which British manufacturers at that period were generally apathetic? At. least one British man of science, who in later years achieved an international reputation, had refused in his youth an invitation from a firm of chemical manufacturers to become their research chemist because of the miserable accommodation they thought good enough for the purpose. However that may be, Britain can at all events claim the honour of having produced in Perkin a pioneer in the evolution of organic chemistry. His work has given birth, not merely to a host of beautiful colours, but also to innumerable synthetic drugs, perfumes, and other substances that minister to the comfort and convenience of man—not to mention others, like poison gases, that do not.