Mauveine

Mauveine by Steven Stewart-Gallus



In 1856 an 18 year old William Henry Perkin created Mauveine, the world's first ever synthetic dye. Mauveine is a purple dye. It also goes by the names aniline purple and Perkin's Mauve.

Composition: The actual composition of Mauveine wasn't known untill recently, (1994). It is actually a mixture of at least 4 similiar compounds. Only one compound is shown above. These compounds consists of Nitrogen, Carbon, and Hydrogen. They is heterocyclic, that is to say, they have rings of carbon and some Nitrogen but also have some completely carbon aromatic rings. As viewable in the diagram above they have NH2 groups and therefore are amines although they aren't very smelly.

Why does Mauveine matter to the world? Mauveine was the world's first ever synthetic dye. Without it and the synthetic dyes that followed it everybody would be stuck wearing boring grays and browns. Mauveine also helped spawn an entire synthetic chemical industry.

On Perkin: William Henry Perkin was born in London as the youngest son of seven. When he discovered Mauveine he was a lucky man. With a lot of hard work he got rich from it. It was literally the only product of it's kind in his days. The bright purple hue of mauveine was only matched by royal purple; a dye so rare and expensive that only royalty could afford it.

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