Synthetic Dye Industry Research Articles

Shedding light on the composition and degradation mechanism of dyes in historical ink's collection (19th-20th century)

Man has always used writing to be able to communicate, express, and disseminate his thoughts. In time, many different coloured extracts of plant and animal origin have been used to produce inks; after the development of synthetic chemistry, artificial and synthetic dyes started to be widely exploited. The end of the 19th century marked great technological and industrial innovations in commercial production of artists' materials. To reveal ink formulations and build a database of red inks by different producers, we developed a multi-analytical approach and investigated a collection of writing inks produced in France in the late 19th – early 20th century. The materials used as binders, additives, dyes, and pigments have been investigated by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array and tandem mass spectrometric detectors (HPLC-DAD-MS2), in situ derivatisation pyrolysis coupled with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py(HMDS)-GC/MS), surface enhanced Raman (SERS, TLC-SERS) and X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopies. Several dyes and pigments were detected, showing that the French ink's formulations of the early days of synthetic dye industry were based on rhodamine B and 6G, eosin Y, rose Bengal and methyl or crystal violet. Instead, as binder and additives only gum Arabic and shellac resin have been identified, respectively. Mass spectrometry also allowed us to detect possible by-products of the synthesis of ink's dyes and even early degradation products, that can be used for ink identification in historical writings and drawings. Our studies can pave the way to investigate inks in historical samples by introducing ultra-sensitive chromatographic and mass spectrometric methods in the array of analytical tools available to the chemist.

Organic pigments: general principles

AbstractThis introductory chapter presents an overview of the general principles underlying the structural chemistry, manufacturing processes, and application technology of organic pigments. The coverage provides a fundamental theoretical and practical basis for the chapters that follow in this series that are devoted to specific chemical classes of industrially significant organic pigments of the azo, phthalocyanine, carbonyl, dioxazine, and metal complex classes. The initial sections cover the fundamental differences which mean that dyes and pigments are considered universally as two separate types of colorant, based on their solubility characteristics. They also provide discussions of the contrasting chemical, technological, and performance features of organic and inorganic pigments. An outline of the most important historical features in the development of the synthetic organic pigment industry is then presented, from its origins in the 19th century that followed soon after the development of the industrial synthetic dye industry, through its expansion in the 20th century, to its current position as a mature global industry. A section then follows that describes the functions that organic pigments are required to perform in their application, mainly their optical functions that include not only color properties, including hue, strength, brightness, but also the contrasting requirements for transparency or opacity as demanded by specific applications. The pigments are also required to resist the conditions and agencies that they might encounter in applications, assessed as fastness properties, such as fastness to light, heat, solvents and chemicals, amongst many others, to an extent that specific applications demand. The principles, in broad terms, of the ways in which chemical structures determine colour and performance of organic pigments are discussed, with focus not only on the influence of molecular structure, but also on the effect of the crystal structural arrangement and the particulate structure, including particle size and shape and its distribution, on application performance. This is important as these pigments are applied as a dispersion of finely divided crystalline solid particles that are insoluble and are ultimately trapped mechanically in their application medium, often a polymer. The manufacture of organic pigments is discussed in broad terms. The overall process may be considered in stages, initiated by the chemical synthetic sequence in which the pigment is formed, followed by a conditioning stage where the crude product thus obtained is modified to optimise its performance properties, and finally finishing where the product is processed into a form, or preparation, that is suitable for its intended applications. Finally, the technological principles underlying a broad range of the most important application areas for organic pigments, which are mainly in paints, inks, and plastics, are discussed.

일제강점기 합성염료 염색 강습에 관한 연구

This study is about the general education of synthetic dyes provided during the Japanese colonial era. Synthetic dyes were distributed in South Korea since they had been imported from the West in the late 1880s. In the early stage, synthetic dyes produced in western countries through the intermediary trade between Japan and China. Then, in the 1930s, when Japan’s synthetic dye industry began in earnest, Campaigns to wear Color Garments(色服奬勵運動) was developing, led by institutions. There was a difference according to the region, but in fact, people were forced to wear colored clothes. Dyeing and weaving factories(染織工場) produced dyeing fabric, and linen shops sold dyeing fabric, but generally, dyeing took place at home. There were some dye houses(染色所) operated by experts who had been trained in a professional educational institution, but it was difficult to use them in farming villages since they were expensive and rare. As the synthetic dyes were expensive, farmers(農民) were reluctant to purchase them, so some institutions first provided the synthetic dyes for low-income classes, receiving support from local notables. Dyeing at home was done mainly by housewives. Housewives who were busy with housework learned the theory of synthetic dyes and the dyeing method through newspapers, radio, and a short dyeing course. This study investigated how the synthetic dye education was conducted for general citizens during the Japanese colonial era. The research method is literature research. This study analyzed the subjects and courses recorded in the printed media(印刷媒體) such as newspaper articles, magazines, and advertisements published during the Japanese colonial era.

The Rise of Synthetic Colors in the American Food Industry, 1870–1940

This article examines how, starting in the 1870s, food manufacturers in the United States began to use standardized color, achieved by synthetic dyes, as part of their marketing strategies. The emergence of the synthetic dye industry paralleled the growth of mass production and mass marketing in the American food industry. It provided food manufacturers with an economical means to standardize their products and helped establish brand identities through consistent appearance. By 1938, food dyes had achieved such widespread use, and had raised such public concern, that the federal government amended the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act to implement more stringent measures to regulate the industry.

Using simulation experiments to test historical explanations: the development of the German dye industry 1857-1913

In a simulation experiment, building on the abductive simulation approach of Brenner and Werker (2007), we test historical explanations for why German firms came to surpass British and France firms and to dominate the global synthetic dye industry for three decades before World War 1 while the U.S. never achieved large market share despite large home demand. Murmann and Homburg (J Evol Econ 11(2):177–205, 2001) and Murmann (2003) argued that German firms came to dominate the global industry because of (1) the high initial number of chemists in Germany at the start of the industry in 1857, (2) the high responsiveness of the German university system and (3) the late (1877) introduction of a patent regime in Germany as well as the more narrow construction of this regime compared to Britain, France and the U.S. We test the validity of these three potential explanations with the help of simulation experiments. The experiments show that the 2nd explanation—the high responsiveness of the German university system— is the most compelling one because unlike the other two it is true for virtually all plausible historical settings.

Conducting Simulation Experiments to Test Historical Explanations: The Historical Development of the German Dye Industry 1857-1913

In a simulation experiment, building on the abductive simulation approach of Brenner and Werker (2007), we test historical explanations for why German firms came to surpass British and France firms and to dominate the global synthetic dye industry for three decades before World War 1 while the U.S. never achieved large market share despite large home demand. Murmann and Homburg (2001) and Murmann (2003) argued that German firms came to dominate the global industry because of (1) the high initial number of organic chemists in Germany at the start of the industry in 1857, (2) the high responsiveness of the German university system and (3) the late (1877) introduction of a patent regime in Germany as well as the more narrow construction of this regime compared to Britain, France and the U.S. Our simulation experiments show that the responsiveness of the German university system was especially important for the development of the dominant German position.

The Coevolution of Industries and Important Features of Their Environments

As the rate of innovation increases, organizational environments are becoming faster and more complex, posing greater challenges for organizations to adapt. This study argues that the concept of coevolution offers a bridge between the prescient adaptationist and ex post selectionist perspectives of organizational change to account for the increasing rates of change. The mutual causal influences in a coevolutionary relationship help explain why competing sets of firms or individual firms can capture dominant shares in product markets. Using a comparative historical method and drawing on evidence from five countries over a 60-year period, this paper inquires how precisely coevolutionary processes work in shaping the evolution of industries and important features of their environments. It identifies—in the context of the synthetic dye industry—three causal mechanisms (exchange of personnel, commercial ties, and lobbying) and suggests how they acted as levers on the fundamental mechanisms of evolution. Understanding the levers is important for managing change in a world that is increasingly becoming coevolutionary, requiring managers to focus more on the emergent, system-level properties of their environments.

Raphael Meldola, his blue and his times

Raphael Meldola (1849–1915), English industrial and academic chemist, spectroscopist, naturalist, educator and lobbyist for science, is today almost a forgotten scientist whose life is celebrated only with a medal awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry that honors achievement by younger chemists. In the 1870–80s, however, he invented a number of important synthetic dyestuffs including the cotton dyes isamine blue and Meldola's blue, and also naphthol green B, all of which have had application in biology and medicine. I describe here the early emergence of the synthetic dye industry, the first science-based industry, Meldola's role in its development, and his own inventions. Meldola's wide ranging achievements in science led to appointments as president of important professional scientific and manufacturers' societies. He was a fervent disciple of natural selection, a correspondent of Charles Darwin, and a prominent 19th-century neo-Darwinian. In 1886, drawing on analogies with evolutionary theory, he warned the British that neglect of science, particularly chemistry, would lead to industrial decline and even extinction, though his message generally was ignored, at least until 1914.

Regional institutions, ownership transformation, and migration of industrial leadership in China: the case of the Chinese synthetic dye industry, 1978-2008

Scholars have emphasized the gradual ownership transformation of enterprises as a key driver of the Chinese economy's unprecedented growth. However, little work has been done on the issue of whether this transformation process takes place evenly across the various regions in China. This article describes the important role of regional institutions in shaping the ownership-based competitiveness of local enterprises and the migration of industries across regions. In the case of the Chinese synthetic dye industry, the passing of leadership from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to collectively owned enterprises (COEs) and then to private enterprises (PEs) was accompanied by a concurrent leadership migration from one region to another. The article contends that this simultaneous occurrence was not accidental. Four institutional constraints—the degree of central supervision, the local labor arrangements, the local social welfare provision, and the degree of ambiguity in property rights—retarded the rise of new ownership forms in the previously dominant regions. This gave other regions the opening to take over leadership positions by providing a more favorable institutional context for new ownership forms. These findings are likely to apply to all of the Chinese manufacturing industries that existed prior to 1978 and that subsequently did not experience significant technological changes and were not highly protected by the government.

Early drug discovery and the rise of pharmaceutical chemistry

Studies in the field of forensic pharmacology and toxicology would not be complete without some knowledge of the history of drug discovery, the various personalities involved, and the events leading to the development and introduction of new therapeutic agents. The first medicinal drugs came from natural sources and existed in the form of herbs, plants, roots, vines and fungi. Until the mid-nineteenth century nature's pharmaceuticals were all that were available to relieve man's pain and suffering. The first synthetic drug, chloral hydrate, was discovered in 1869 and introduced as a sedative-hypnotic; it is still available today in some countries. The first pharmaceutical companies were spin-offs from the textiles and synthetic dye industry and owe much to the rich source of organic chemicals derived from the distillation of coal (coal-tar). The first analgesics and antipyretics, exemplified by phenacetin and acetanilide, were simple chemical derivatives of aniline and p-nitrophenol, both of which were byproducts from coal-tar. An extract from the bark of the white willow tree had been used for centuries to treat various fevers and inflammation. The active principle in white willow, salicin or salicylic acid, had a bitter taste and irritated the gastric mucosa, but a simple chemical modification was much more palatable. This was acetylsalicylic acid, better known as Aspirin®, the first blockbuster drug. At the start of the twentieth century, the first of the barbiturate family of drugs entered the pharmacopoeia and the rest, as they say, is history.

Regional Institutions, Ownership Transformation, and Migration of Industrial Leadership in China: The Case of the Chinese Synthetic Dye Industry, 1978-2008

Scholars have emphasized the gradual ownership transformation of enterprises as a key driver of the Chinese economy’s unprecedented growth. However, little work has been done on the issue of whether this transformation process takes place evenly across the various regions in China. This paper describes the important role of regional institutions in shaping the ownership-based competitiveness of local enterprises and the migration of industries across regions. In the case of the Chinese synthetic dye industry, the passing of leadership from state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to collectively owned enterprises (COEs) and then to private enterprises (PEs) was accompanied by a concurrent leadership migration from one region to another. The paper contends that this simultaneous occurrence was not accidental. Four institutional constraints - the degree of central supervision, the local labor arrangements, the local social welfare provision, and the degree of ambiguity in property rights - retarded the rise of new ownership forms in the previously dominant regions. This gave other regions the opening to take over leadership positions by providing a more favorable institutional context for new ownership forms. These findings are likely to apply to all of the Chinese manufacturing industries that existed prior to 1978 and that subsequently did not experience significant technological changes and were not highly protected by the government.

The Coevolution of Industries and Important Features of Their Environments

As the rate of innovation increases, organizational environments are becoming faster and more complex, posing greater challenges for organizations to adapt. This study argues that the concept of coevolution offers a bridge between the prescient adaptationist and ex-post selectionist perspectives of organizational change to account for the increasing rates of change. The mutual causal influences in a coevolutionary relationship help explain why competing sets of firms or individual firms can capture dominant shares in product markets. Using a comparative historical method and drawing on evidence from five countries over a 60-year period, this paper inquires how precisely coevolutionary processes work in shaping the evolution of industries and important features of their environments. It identifies - in the context of the synthetic dye industry - three causal mechanisms (exchange of personnel, commercial ties, and lobbying) and suggests how they acted as levers on the fundamental mechanisms of evolution. Understanding the levers is important for managing change in a world that is increasingly becoming coevolutionary, requiring managers to focus more on the emergent, system level properties of their environments.

Raman study of synthetic organic pigments and dyes in early lithographic inks (1890–1920)

AbstractThe colorants and additives present in lithographic inks used in a group of posters manufactured during the period between 1890 and 1920, an extremely fruitful period regarding the development of the synthetic dye and pigment industry, were identified by Raman spectroscopy. Synthetic organic pigments and dyes were detected along with inorganic pigments. Red, blue and yellow synthetic organic pigments were more frequently observed in posters manufactured by the end of the 1890–1920 period, reflecting that lithographers were actively experimenting to achieve hues not accessible using inorganic pigments alone. The water‐sensitivity of the inks containing synthetic organic colorants is discussed in relation to the potential application of aqueous conservation treatments to early posters. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions (review)

Reviewed by: Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions Raymond Stokes (bio) Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology, and National Institutions. By Johann Peter Murmann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 294. $60. A significant part of Johann Peter Murmann's book retells the story of the synthetic dyes industry between 1857 and 1914. As is well-known, William Henry Perkin discovered the first coal-tar dye in England in 1857. Despite its early leadership, though, the British synthetic dye industry fell behind its thriving German counterpart, which was bolstered by excellent academic programs in chemistry, investment in dedicated research-and-development laboratories by major firms, and patent legislation that fostered innovation. By 1913, the German industry accounted for nearly 90 percent of world trade in organic chemicals. Meanwhile, the United States, despite rapid industrial development, languished far behind even the British in this area, a situation that did not change until after World War I. [End Page 229] Murmann makes no pretense to adding much in the way of empirical detail to this story. Instead, he uses it as a vehicle to elaborate a theory of "coevolution" among chemical firms, chemical technology, and national institutions. According to his own definition, "Two evolving populations coevolve if and only if they both have a significant causal impact on each other's ability to persist" (p. 210, emphasis in original). In other words, development of each of the points of Murmann's triangle affected, and was affected by, development of the others. Only by exploring this complex and dynamic set of relationships, Murmann argues, can we explain not just how and why Germany emerged as the dominant force in this industry despite Britain's first-mover and resource advantages, but also how and why particular firms came to dominate the German industry. It is an ambitious argument, and Murmann should be given credit for his masterful synthesis both of scholarship on the emergence of the organic chemicals industry and of a wide array of—frequently theoretical—literature from management studies, economics, and business, economic, and technological history. He also effectively links examination of macroeconomic and firm-level developments, and considers not just the firms that emerged as "winners," but also those that were unsuccessful. Finally, despite the book's limited ambitions in extending the empirical basis of its subject area (no archival sources and very few primary printed works are cited), the database of dye firms compiled by Murmann and Ernst Homburg from the University of Maastricht yields a significant new dimension to the story of the emergence of the organic chemicals industry. Not only were there more startups in Germany than in its Anglo-Saxon rivals, there were also far more firms that went out of business or were acquired by other firms. This seems to support the idea that failure of many firms is an essential precondition for the success of a few. Despite its achievements, Murmann's book has its weaker points. The author accepts that many of the "facts" he presents are not new. But some of his "findings" are well established also, and aspects of the methodology are not as novel as Murmann makes them out to be. Few would dispute that Germany's main advantages over its competitors in the development of this industry were its educational and training system, its research capability (in both universities and eventually also in industrial laboratories), and its patent legislation. Similarly, it is well-known that investment in industrial laboratories and the cultivation of close relationships with university scientists were major factors in the growing dominance of German firms. And, though it may be rare, "looking first at the industry as a whole and then zooming in on a carefully chosen set of individual firms" is certainly not "a novel research design" (p. 96). Moreover, to the extent that Murmann is successful in developing a new theory of coevolution for business and economic history, the history of technology, and management studies, he faces problems integrating human [End Page 230] agency into the equation, especially at the level of the firm. If much of what firms do is shaped by national institutions and...

Technoscience avant la lettre

I argue and demonstrate in this essay that interconnected systems of science and technology, or technoscience, existed long before the late nineteenth century, and that eighteenth-century chemistry was such an early form of technoscience. Based on recent historical research on the early development of carbon chemistry from the late 1820s until the 1840s—which revealed that early carbon chemistry was an experimental expert culture that was largely detached from the mundane industrial world—I further examine the question of the internal preconditions within the expert culture of carbon chemistry that contributed to its convergence with the synthetic-dye industry in the late 1850s. I argue that the introduction of new types and techniques of organic-chemical reactions and organic substances in this experimental expert culture, along with the application of chemical formulae as paper tools for modeling reactions as well as the chemical constitution and structure of substances, enabled academic chemists to make specific, novel contributions to chemical technology and industry in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Shifting ontologies, changing classifications: plant materials from 1700 to 1830

This paper studies European chemists’ shifting ontologies of materials by comparing the ways in which they classified materials. The focus is on plant materials, their different identities, and the changing ways chemists sorted out and ordered plant materials in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The main goals of the paper are to follow the development of plant materials from ordinary, everyday materials and commodities in the early eighteenth century to purified carbon compounds and organic substances familiar only to experts in the 1830s, and to reconstruct chemists’ ways of classifying these objects in different practical and intellectual contexts. The study of changes in European chemists’ ways of classifying plant materials over more than a century brings to the foreground a trajectory of ontological shifts that is ‘punctuated’ in the 1750s, the 1790s, and the 1830s. Early eighteenth-century plant materials, which were commodities of the apothecary trade and other arts and crafts, were elevated epistemically as compound components or ‘proximate principles’ of plants in the 1750s, reduced to organic compounds in the 1790s, and replaced by carbon compounds in the 1830s. The last, third transformation of the epistemic constitution of materials and the mode of their classification was accompanied by a deep transformation of the material culture of plant chemistry. After the late 1830s, many of the eighteenth-century vegetable commodities disappeared from chemists’ agenda or were split into different substances individuated and identified in new ways. Coal tar products, and new organic artefacts containing chlorine or bromine, entered the chemical laboratory in the 1820s and became fused with the purified rest of the previous plant and animal substances. The material objects of the new culture of organic chemistry became detached from the materials applied in the extant arts and crafts. It was only in the late 1850s, with the rise of the synthetic dye industry, that a great number of these laboratory substances became involved in industrial production.

Contaminated Earth and Water: A Legacy of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry

This paper demonstrates that the subject of the transport and fate of waste from the synthetic dye industry is far more than a footnote in history. It is actually a major chapter, encompassing both Europe and the United States. Indeed, in the 1990s there was as much interest in the history of the industry and its wastes among environmental litigators, particularly in the United States, as there was in the history of the dye industry among historians of chemistry. Review and analysis of various sources (ranging from expert reports, through early legislation, lobbying by and on behalf of the synthetic dyestuffs industry, methods of chemical detection and identification, and processes of waste handling and treatment) make it clear that much was known about the persistent and problematic nature of this waste. This included soil and groundwater contamination, as well as surface water pollution. There were considerable efforts to regulate manufacturers before 1890, but after that time the political and economic muscle of industry prevailed and prevented effective remedial action. Until the mid-twentieth century the industry effectively exerted its own destiny, self-regulatory and otherwise, even in the face of opposition.

Contaminated Earth and Water: A Legacy of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry

This paper demonstrates that the subject of the transport and fate of waste from the synthetic dye industry is far more than a footnote in history. It is actually a major chapter, encompassing both Europe and the United States. Indeed, in the 1990s there was as much interest in the history of the industry and its wastes among environmental litigators, particularly in the United States, as there was in the history of the dye industry among historians of chemistry. Review and analysis of various sources (ranging from expert reports, through early legislation, lobbying by and on behalf of the synthetic dyestuffs industry, methods of chemical detection and identification, and processes of waste handling and treatment) make it clear that much was known about the persistent and problematic nature of this waste. This included soil and groundwater contamination, as well as surface water pollution. There were considerable efforts to regulate manufacturers before 1890, but after that time the political and economic muscle of industry prevailed and prevented effective remedial action. Until the mid-twentieth century the industry effectively exerted its own destiny, self-regulatory and otherwise, even in the face of opposition.

Justus von Liebig-Leading Teacher of Organic Chemistry

Justus von Liebig-Leading Teacher of Organic Chemistry

Justus von Liebig-Leading Teacher of Organic Chemistry

Justus von Liebig-Leading Teacher of Organic Chemistry