The battle for magenta

One of the most important discoveries in organic chemistry was that of the dye mauveine by 18-year old William Henry Perkin in 1856.¹ This discovery alerted the chemical world to the rich and potentially useful store of chemicals present in coal tar, until then a nuisance byproduct from the manufacture of coke and coal gas. In scaling up his synthesis, Perkin laid the foundations of the industrial organic chemical industry which today gives us polymers, explosives, pharmaceuticals and much more. 

But the manufacture of mauveine was not without its drawbacks, the most notable of which was the low synthetic yield - often no more than 5 per cent. The major products were a brown tarry material and a black insoluble powder. The former had no use at all, and the latter occasionally found application in printers' inks though mostly it was dumped.